Sony PlayStation 3 Sales Up - Massively

Joji, I hope to hell you never run a business that employs other people.

Where are Sony going to get the money from to drop the price if they don't make savings on their production costs? Taking out the EE/GS and replacing it with a stand-alone GS and removing the GS completely along with the card readers and USB ports is what has enabled Sony to afford the price cut.

You seem to have a bee in your bonnet regarding Sony's pricing strategy, you have always harped on about Sony's "greed" in pricing the PS2, PSP and PS3. The PS2 has been priced at the level that the market will sustain, 120M+ units sold does not point to over pricing. The same is true of the PSP.

The PS3 has been priced high in order to recoup as much of the production costs as possible and sales have been relatively sluggish. Although, they seem to be matching the 360's sales and apparently have exceeded those of the PS2.

In order to speed up sales, Sony decided to drop the price. How to do that? We've already increased efficiencies in the production process, component prices are coming down but not fast enough. OK, we'll have to remove some components.

It's very simple economics. I wish you'd understand some time and stop harping back to this tired old point.

All of the above said, I still think that dropping BC completely was a bad move, but I can see the economic reasons for it. Hopefully some industrious firmware programmer is working on perfect GS emulation as we speak and 40GB owners will be able to update and play PS2 games, but I'm not holding my breath.

Excellent post Tyrion, however I feel as though your banging your head against a brick wall. I will concede though that I think the removal of BC was a bit stupid. But I'd like to bet that after Christmas, Sony will release a "Full Fat" PS3 with a 120GB or even 160GB hard drive for the same £349 price point.

BENTLEY, why don't you get a pre-owned 60gb PS3 you can get them around the £300 mark anyway!

i run a ps3 comparison website ps3 deals and can confirm that sales of the ps3 or through the roof compared to pre 10th oct, sales for us have gone up by around 500% and double the amount of people of are searching for the ps3 on google/yahoo etc.. as far as the 40gb vs 60gb goes i can tell you that only 10-15% of people are buying the 40gb even though it is £50 cheaper? Im not sure whether christmas sales are having an effect on our results, ill find out in january i suppose, but i expect once the 60gb runs out they will introduce a new model, maybe with more memory and ps2 backwards compatability as a hell of a lot of people are put off by this on the 40gb. We will wait and see!

I'm sure 40GB slaes will pick up as we approach Christmas. The SKU is aimed at the pressie-buying parent market.

The reason we're currently seeing large sales of the 60GB is a combination of the bundle deal being well worth the extra £50, the price dropping below the threshold for a large number of people who were "just waiting for a price drop" and the goldrush around getting a PS2-BC SKU before they run out.

To Tyrion,

I have to say, you know I usually slam Sony for its stupidity, and that I also pick you out of the crowd allot for Sony sympathising, but I for one think Sony has at last created what was required, a cheaper SKU, it’s what everyone has asked for and it’s what everyone is getting, but all I see is the those same people moaning still about BC about less USB ports and it annoys me. Sony isn’t magical they cant reduce costs without cutting somewhere and you have the option to purchase the higher priced unit if you want everything else!

Why am I addressing it to you Tyrion well because although we don’t always agree you are always on the ball with the strategy of Sony and I feel that I have given you a hard time over your defence of Sony but at last you were proven right, and I hold my hands up and say that the possibility of Sony’s (This Gen) reign has now begun and I was wrong.

Thanks for the sentiments; I've often found that if I speak against the Internet group-think, I'm accused of being a fan boy, even when I'm just pointing out the fallacy of the arguments used.

It's true I've defended Sony a lot recently, but that's really only due to the current wave of hatred against them bringing the stupid arguments to the fore. I've "attacked" and "defended" Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo where I felt it was necessary.

As to Sony's reign beginning, we'll have to wait and see. I'm still anticipating a 40/30/30% PS3/360/Wii split when all's said and done on this generation.

Sony have a lot of inertia to overcome and I just can't see the PS3 selling the same numbers that its older brothers did. With high unit costs and high dev costs, there are fewer users to sell expensive games to. Publishers are hedging their bets. This price cut will help, but the PS3 has a long way to go.

The 360 is not as forward looking as the PS3 technologically, so we're going to see more devs complaining about the restrictions it imposes and this will affect the quality and numbers of games. The hardware sales slowdown has already started for the 360 and the Wii has already passed it on total units sold worldwide.

The Wii is deliberately underpowered and so doesn't need an update hardware-wise to compete, but it has the whiff of the Breville toaster* about it. Recently the President of Enterbrain (publishers of Famitsu and collectors of sales data in Japan) said that 67% of Japanese Wii owners are not playing regularly.

This is, in my estimation, going to be a slow sales generation, all three consoles have reasons to sell and reasons to whither. In the end, I think the PlayStation brand and the longevity of Sony's consoles will push the PS3 to the fore, but it may be too late since I'm sure the next Xbox is only a few years away and Wii2 can't be that far behind it.

*For those that don't know, a Breville toaster is a sandwich toaster used to make "hot pocket" like snacks, it's a device that gets bought, used a lot then ignored and eventually thrown out. Most UK kitchens have one, but nobody can remember the last time it was used. Except students, who live on the snacks it produces.

Bentley, PS3 is not next gen just because the 40gb don't have backwards compatibility?

Oh, I guess that means 360 isn't next gen either.

You can't stand the thought of disc error when you try to play PS2 games on 40gb PS3?

Well buy a 60gb or 80gb then.

Oh, and I guess you probably can stand the red ring of death from your 360 if you have one.

Sony actually made 40gb for the people who can't afford a PS3, but wants to move to next gen real quick. So its their choice.

The 360 has around 4 different cores for different prices, yet how come no one complains about that?

You and other people who complain about Sony 24/7 will never be satisfied no matter what Sony decides to do.

Daemon, Sony is NOT taking out backwards compatibility out of all its cores.

Sony is only taking it out of the 40gb version to make it cheaper... Sony will always keep two different cores, the cheaper one and the more expensive one.

Its not a strategy to get more sales. If they WERE planning to do what you said, then they would've taken out backwards compatibility out of the other PS3s.

Sony will never do that, because they believe the REAL reason why people want a PS3 is because of all of its features and reliability.

The main reason for the 40gb is so that cheap people can afford it... without all the features.

So if you want backwards compatibility, 5 years from now, Sony will STILL have PS3's out that have backwards compatibility.

I take it you failed to read the statement from the head of Sony Europe saying that the 40GB non-BC machine is going to be the only system once the current 60GB models sell through, then? The one where he said that from now on there would be no further BC support?

No?

Oh well, better go to the shops and buy yourself some Humble Pie before reading this piece:

http://news.spong.com/article/13955

I'll tell you why people hate on Sony, because they fxxk up more than a fxxked motha fxxcker. They need to get their bs together and fast.

I too will beat up or praise any of the big three, as and when they deserve it. Sony are all over the place, like a drunk on shift at a brewery. They are sowing the seeds of their downfall and its been a long time coming.

Paint it as rosey as I once did for GC, but PS3 is last place and it will be for this gen. I don't think Blu Ray isn't gonna be enough to save them this time. It won't be long til the 360 HD-DVD player gets a fat price cut in response to this PS3 40gb. Just watch on the run up the xmas, if not the January sales. Good games will come to PS3, but IMO it won't be enough to save it, not even FFXIII or MGS, when fresh IP like Lost Odyssey and Mass Effect etc are being created.

This whole thing feels like the PSP all over again. When the PS3's first year is up, I expect the situation won't have changed much. End of 08 it will be too late. 360 and Wii are both too much for Sony to battle and that fact will be enough will seal their fate, let alone their own debacles.