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Jack Tretton: "$299 Is The Sweet Spot" For PS3
Sony Computer Entertainment America president Jack Tretton believes that the PS3’s new £249/$299 price point is the "sweet spot" that will convince more consumers to adopt the platform.
"We're extremely pleased that we've been able to meet production efficiencies that have allowed us to pass those savings onto consumers," he said following PS3 price cut announcements and the unveiling of the PS3 Slim at Gamescom. "We really think that $299 is the sweet spot when consumers think about all the features that exist in the PlayStation 3. There's just no better value on the market.”
The PS3, which now retails for half of its late 2006 launch price, has undergone a form change after less than three years on the market. In comparison, the original PlayStation and PS2 saw hardware revisions in their third and fourth years.
"We're still in the infancy stage, especially for a company that consistently delivers ten year product lifecycles,” Tretton added. “"If you look at how far PlayStation 3 has come in terms of features, in terms of the great games that have been offered and to understand that's being done at half the original price with a 120GB hard drive being built in, with a new slimmer lighter form factor, it's staggering to think how far this has come in less than three years and to envision how far it will go before this system is over and done with."
Analysts have also been reacting to Sony's Gamescom announcements. Cowen’s Doug Creutz said that while the PS3 price cut “could help resuscitate demand for the platform and drive some additional software sales,” the existence of a rival $299 core-gamer focused platform, the Xbox 360 Pro, means that the impact of Sony’s move will not be as “significant as the impacts from price cuts on the PS2 in the last cycle.”
Lazard Capital Markets’ Colin Sebastian called the move “an important (and overdue) step for Sony to limit further market share losses this console cycle… Our analysis of historical console sales in the US suggests that price reductions consistently drive higher unit sales, as well as stimulate incremental demand for new software,” he said.
Jesse Divnich with EEDAR said that in terms of value “the PlayStation 3 is a superior hardware product in comparison to the Xbox 360.” However, he added, “this is not to suggest that hardware sales will suddenly shift to Sony’s favour - a superior hardware system is only one variable in the equation for next-generation success. Nevertheless, the PlayStation 3 price cut will act as a positive catalyst that will close the sales gap between the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.”
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Jack the Xbox 360 tends to have the better deals in the uk. Alot of the time microsoft will give pads\games to stores for free. Bundles tend to be the same only 80-100 pounds cheeper, Or you get more games & pads for the same money, secondhand software tends to be cheeper then the PS3 also. That and in most dedicated stores the 360 has more shelf space, Gamestation being cheif among them.
I refuse to buy at Gamestation, i think that they're all really rude in there. Bad coustomer service. GAME is where you should go.
or why not stay away from these stores who try to skank us with their high prices......
Stop winging you lot. Just save up for a bit longer. Maybe don't go out and spend so much on Friday night and then money you save will go towards a PS3/PSP...
Well he would say that as he works for a company that's only in it for the profit. For the last 2 days, people have been bantering on about the price drop but it's hardly dropped in price. In the UK, you can pick up a PS3 (old model) with around 4 games for £279.99. I expected the Slim to be £199.99. To add insult to injury, you lucky Americans can pick one up for about £185, in the UK, it's about £250 (300 Euros). Same old story that Europe gets skanked.
When you think about it, Sony doesnt want to fight for Europe anymore. The problem its that out of 21 million PS3s, 10 million are in Europe. Sonys realised that it needs to foucs its attention on the biggest game consumer market in the world, and thats why its cheaper in America, to entice them all to it. Europes got half of it products, and Japan practically a PS3 fort. So... ya know....
PS3 Slim $299 - comes with Wifi.
Xbox Pro (soon to be replace by repriced Elite with no included HDMI cable?) $299 - add wifi $100.
Blu-ray is great, but I think a stronger sales point for Sony would be to push the fact that wifi comes standard and not as an expensive add-on. I'm amazed that I have never seen any consumer-oriented marketing from Sony trying to capitalize on this difference.
Now Sony just has to introduce a faster firmware update process similar to MS's, and revamp the web browser to be more accepting of media plugins used on various websites. Games aside, I think the PS3 offers a broader package of services (even without netflix and at no additional "Gold" membership cost) than the Xbox. The "New Xbox Experience" and all the avatar window dressing leaves a lot to be desired. Of course now I can shell out MS Points for fancy new avatar garb!
Now if Sony can just figure out an effective strategy for painting the PS3 as the premiere gaming and home entertainment platform.
I had a PS2 two for about 8 months before i decided to go 'next gen'. Ad it took me about 3 months to decided between a PS3 and XBOX360. The problem is whereas, some people will take ages to compare products and decided which is the best for them, most dont and only look at the price. I decided on a PS3 because, my PS2 did me justice (and continues to) and, mostly, because of all the goodies that were piled on. Wi-Fi, BLue-Ray, Internet Browser, No additional Chargtes, ABlility to put all you Music and Photos On, Home (Whcih to be honest isn't amazing) ect ect. But most people are lony looking at the price. Which is a shame, So Sony really needs to push the price drop beyond anything seen before, OR make people appreciate the things there giving away.
They also need to point out that they give you more freedom to surf the internet and do what you want online unlike the 360.
The 360 isn't cheaper once you add inteh same functionality and the PS3 does more in the end. Sony needs to make that clear to people who aren't so anal about reading all the specs before buying.
Wi-Fi doesn't seem to be giving Sony any traction. If it did, they could have argued they've been the same price all along.
It's like when the Xbox used to argue online play & a built-in hard drive. These features were just as big as Wi-Fi & Blu-Ray, and its graphics were noticably better than the PS2. Value-added features don't seem to do anything in convincing people to buy hardware. Personally, it doesn't make sense to me, but there it is.
Wifi on it's own isn't enough. The HDMI cable, blu-ray and wifi together along with freedom to browse the internet your way is enough, imo.
I just had a thought. This means the PS3 Slim and PSPGo! are gonna be the same price. Who the fuck is going to buy a PSPGo! for £250 when they can get an infinitely better machine for the same price. Obviously the PS3 isn't portable but I know which one I would buy.
Japan will buy the PSP because, for whatever reason, that culture loves handhelds.
PSP Go is going to retail at £224.99 so not quite the same price, but I agree with the point. Its over priced.. more expensive than the original hanheld and its not even a true successor.
It seems a lot but I remember paying 400 quid for my Sega Saturn. Worth every penny once I loaded Sega Rally.
Most of the PS3s recently sold at 400€ had two controllers and 1-2 games. The slim packages include neither. Can one call that cheaper? At the same time, Europe is charged with a 30% higher price compared to the U.S., which sounds never good to customers who get connected globally at an increasing rate.
The whole UK business is sound. Since anybody in the EU can order from the UK, the prices in the UK had to go up, since they had always been cheaper than on the continent. Still in some countries (e.g. Poland), one can still grab a cheap PS3.
The whole point about the sweet spot is nothing more than an argument for "you should squeeze the maximum from anybody". If you are a smart customer, you can avoid that.
I was in Poland Last week... you are looking at over 1500 zł for a PS3... which is over £300 and a 360 premium will set you back over £200 there.
Maybe i was looking in the wrong places, was in Empik and Media Markt but electronics on the whole seemed expensive.
Wow, is £249 confirmed for the UK? If it is, Sony's fall from grace in this country is all but complete. How can this giant of the industry fall so far, so fast and still be making coronary destroying marketing errors? The UK public of 2009 are not the cash cows they were in 1999. If you price high here now , you lose market share. That lesson was learnt 2 years ago and yet the mistake is still being made. Blu Ray players are now to be had for little more than £100, the GPU in the PS3 is by PC standards, now something that belongs in a museum (read cheap). What does that leave to justify this price tag, the coding user-violent cell? The PSP lost to the DS and the iPod touch/iPhone because it played the "I have the best graphics" card rather than the "hey look at that game, I have to have one of those" card. It appealed to fat kids with no mates, not the rest of us. The PS3 plain priced itself out the market and the slim was Sony's last chance this gen to make a big impact in this country. The timing is perfect; Blu Ray awareness is now at a height amongst the public it has never known before, people are getting bored with the Wii, and the 360's failure rate is now part of popular culture. Sony could have released this at £120 to £150 and made a massive dent in the market. £249? Move along folks, nothing to see here......
I'd like to see someone put together a PC with the same components as the ps3 for under 400$ let alone 300$. That's including getting yourself a mouse and keyboard (Or some sort of peripheral controller) I can make myself a pretty sweet PC for 500$ that may rival the PS3's performance, but it looks nowhere near as good(Crappy cheap case) and doesn't have a blu-ray drive, but to be honest PS3 games will get better and better graphically whether or not the hardware upgrades because of code optimisation which doesn't tend to happen as much on a PC as they just scale the processing requirements up.
I don't envy Sonys position, of course if they sold the PS3 at 200$/150£ they'd make a massive dent in the market, but it's not sensible at all. 250£ seems totally sweet to me especially when you factor in the PS3's capabilities, I'm sorry to sound like a marketing bot but you can use it as a home PC using linux as well as a console using the XMB os. The xmb gives you access to PS3 games, and you can do office work etc on the linux partition. It's great, and while you need to use software video drivers for the linux partition (Don't worry in Linux all the drivers you'll need are generally installed during the OS installation) it's still totally fast enough to use all the office apps that come with YellowDog(or whatever distro you choose) plus it only takes 10 gigs of your hard drive space (Ample for storing text files and other stuff) so theres a lot of value to had from a PS3 imo. Your average consumer will never install a linux partition, but the fact is it's there and works great and is simply a faq guide away. I bought my PS3 for 800 USD so the price has over halved in the space of (Not even) two years. Nice work Sony.
Yes you can get an 360 arcade cheaper but you might as well get a lighter and burn holes in your pockets once you want a hard drive. To any techie the PS3 is the better value, and I'm definitely no fat kid with no mates lol.
I'm not looking to derail any of your statements, I'm a huge fan of the Slim, but it does not support Linux installs like its fat cousins.
They might have made a massive dent, but they would have lost a lot of money.
God, this would have carried a lot more weight if he hadn't been such a dick before.
He spent countless press releases discussing how people should shut up about the price due to the PS3's inherent "awesomeness". If he had just said that Sony was trying to reduce manufacturing costs, but the Playstation was just too powerful, and they couldn't manage it; then this statement would look like an achievement.
As it stands, it looks like he's been lying through his teeth the entire time, and planning this move for just as long.
Yeah while I like Sony their PR needs a facelift, Tretton was more like botox gone wrong. This guy talks shit a lot, I love how he insists FFXIV is going to be PS3 exclusive, while SE are releasing it on PC and no word on 360.
Pick your words Tretton because people are paying attention. However I agree with PS3's inherent "awesomeness" lol.
Just like how removing backward-compatibility was an effort to save money and then he admitted that was a lie, too.
Wrong Jack, Wrong. £249, compared to £180 in the US isn't a 'sweet spot'. It just proves your a moron.
Your's truly,
An annoyed PS3 owner.
xxx
Um. You do know that the US price doesn't include tax don't you. Whereas the UK price does.
Remove tax and you're at around £212. You'll also find in the UK that we have more competition orientated retailers. Whereas in the US you'll see the PS3 Slim sell at $299 and only $299 (plus tax), in the UK, you're going to see cuts to around £20 to £30 cheaper, with bundles with games, HDMI cables and extra controllers - including tax.
This is what happens in the UK - games are cheaper here also. Much of this is due to being able to avoid tax in shipping countries like Jersey.
I think my PS3 is region free, isn't it?
Maybe UK citizens should just import them in bulk...
The reason why people don't do this already is because you would have to pay for shipping and import duty! That would most likely push the price back up to near what is advertised. If you guys are that desperate for a cheap PS3 why not get on ebay and see if you can get a 40gb model for less money.
I get the feeling that there are a lot of people here who want to see the price drop to nearer the Xbox mark, ie under £200 mark. It's not going to happen! Just bite the bullet and save the pennies. £250 isn't a great amount of money and thats the price their asking. No amount of jumping up and down, stamping your feet is going to make Sony change there minds drop the Slim PS3 any lower.
I don't know why UKers haven't done this the whole time. Plus, the PS3's invariably on sale somewhere so you'll easily be able to find it for under 299/249.