Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter has suggested that Sony and Nintendo need to cut the price of their consoles in order to stimulate consumer demand.
“… We believe that the manufacturers have made a strategic error by maintaining pricing for too long,” he said in a research note.
The Wii remains at its November 2006 launch price of $249.99, while the core PS3 SKU has not seen a US price cut since October 2007.
“We think that the [recent] negative software trend is less attributable to a weak software lineup,” added Pachter, “and can only conclude that until consumers are sufficiently interested in buying consoles, it will be difficult for publishers alone to drive sales higher each month.”
Noting that a price cut is not an “almighty weapon,” Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said in June that the company plans to address a slowdown of Wii sales by introducing strong new software rather than reducing the cost of its hardware.
Meanwhile, Sony CEO Howard Stringer said last week that it would be illogical to cut the price of PS3 at the present time.