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PSP Go Price Based On New Hardware “Premium”
Sony Computer Entertainment Europe boss Andrew House says PSP Go’s $249/€249 price point is based on a “premium” associated with new hardware.
Speaking to MCV, House explained that PSP Go’s price wasn’t set in a bid to protect retailers’ margins – which will be hit by the handheld’s download-only software model - or to cover Sony’s research and development costs.
“Those aren’t the factors,” he said. “When you introduce a new piece of hardware you have the opportunity to say there is a certain premium that is associated with it, and we took that into account.
“As with all hardware launches you look at the business model, the cost structure, and the necessarily level of profitability, and you use that to set the wholesale price. Much as we do with any other hardware.”
PSP Go has yet to be officially priced for the UK market, but multiple indie retailers told us earlier this week that they were downbeat about the recently announced system’s prospects.
Chips MD Don McCabe told us that he isn’t currently planning on stocking PSP Go upon its October 1 release, while Grainger Games purchasing director Chris Harwood said that PSP “appears to have died as a format.”
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Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court 30 Monmouth Street Bath, UK BA1 2BW
England and Wales company registration number 2008885
Errrrr you can still get the PSP 3000 so what's the problem? Storm meet tea cup.
WOW! Again, like another news story on this website; a LOT of 'hate' for Sony. Guys, you know you do not need to buy it don't you? If you hate Sony so much why not just call them dead now and be done with it? What is with all the comments Sony is going this way like so so and so? Do you guys have a secret love for them? Otherwise it is hard for me to find a motive for your postings. Bizzare behavior.
The motive for all the posting comes from the secret love for Sony, but for the very public love for the PSP - GO.
Most people, like myself, were anxiously waiting for the "iPhone-with-Buttons". The portable device from the company that knows games & knows gamers. We thought, no we knew Sony was going to whip out a little pwnage on Apple & show 'em how it's done.
And then THIS came out instead. Business-Dorks didn't get faced, we did! To top it off, Edge provided Sony a chance to tell their side of the story about the price. Their public relations official response? Because we can!
Well, they can't just charge the manufacturing cost + some profit margin, as they need to make up the R&D cost to develop the thing. That said, they could've just said that, rather than pissing everybody off with a "new stuff" charge. Also, even factoring in some random cost for making up the R&D, that thing is damned expensive.
“As with all hardware launches you look at the business model, the cost structure, and the necessarily level of profitability, and you use that to set the wholesale price. Much as we do with any other hardware.”
*rolls eyes*
you think they would've learned something from their hilariously bad decision to launch the ps3 at $599.
what's that old saying about those who fail to learn from history...
This is literally one of the worst things this guy could have said.
The iPhone 3GS is brand new, more powerful (this is true), more useful, more exciting, 1,000x cooler, and costs fifty bucks less.
P.S.
In such a fast-paced world, newness loses its meaning and the desire to keep up will and is quickly being replaced with simply the common sense desire for value and utility.
That is the subsidized iPhone price with contract, not the true price of the iPhone.
Watching Sony Computer Entertainment in the last four years is like watching a car accident in slow motion.
Very true!-Bad news is? I`m sat in the back seat-watching my life flash before my eyes!.
Sega learned from past mistakes-MCD, 32X , Saturn etc TOO late and paid the price, is sony going the same way?. hope not as we need strong competition in the market.
When you introduce a new piece of hardware you have the opportunity to say there is a certain premium that is associated with it, and we took that into account.
The price of the PSPGo is just a dick move by Sony!
As a firm they haven't learned a thing from the PS3 about pricing. Nevermind though, nobody will buy the PSPGo and within a few month the RRP of the system will be cut.
It's more expensive than a 360, which is fucked up to be honest, considering the tech and games the 360 has.
It's no wonder Sony noise gamers up with such statements.
Sony? Rapidly becoming what ATARI was before it`s RAPID fall from grace.-Releasing OLD technology at bloody stupid price. Being So far up their own Corporate Backside it`s unreal. and i say this as a PS3 and PSP owner.
Could they make things ANY easier for the competition? I very much doubt it.
They have either got the worlds biggest sand filled board rooms and their heads buried oh so deep in it or are surrounded by YES men they belive the PR bullsh*t they pump out on a daily basis.
As a PSP owner i was hoping for some Bloody games the last 12 months+, not more and more Hardware redesigns. No one at sony noticed the severe drop off of 3rd party support?.
Some more PS3 specific titles that back up their superior tech.claims would be nice as well. The old Ten year plan statement? Does`nt carry much water with me.
who the fook comes up with these UK prices?
It's not so much the fact that the price is stupidly high that ticks me off. It is the simple fact that Americans and Europeans can buy the unit cheaper than us in the UK. Am I supposed to believe that to build a PSP Go for a gamer in New York is cheaper than for one in Old York, England.
I'd import one, but of course Sony all but attempted to destroy import gaming several years ago. Still, they shall reap what they sow. Much as they want to languish sales wise with the PS3 so they shall with the PSP Go. In years to come marketing degree students will be taught all about the company who sailed so high.....only to bring it all crashing down around their ears.
It's not so much the fact that the price is stupidly high that ticks me off. It is the simple fact that Americans and Europeans can buy the unit cheaper than us in the UK. Am I supposed to believe that to build a PSP Go for a gamer in New York is cheaper than for one in Old York, England.
I'd import one, but of course Sony all but attempted to destroy import gaming several years ago. Still, they shall reap what they sow. Much as they want to languish sales wise with the PS3 so they shall with the PSP Go. In years to come marketing degree students will be taught all about the company who sailed so high.....only to bring it all crashing down around their ears.
Usually when an existing platform is repackaged into a new shell, the price remain the same. If the DS or the iPods are rehashed, the price remains. But I guess Sony will put it to the test, if you really can release old hardware and raise the prices by 25%.
Looking forward to the redesigned PS3, I am sure Andrew House might know a reason or two to sell it at $600 again.
I think it's always been pretty common with technology that when you go slimmer and pack the same punch, there's a price for that. You don't want the sleek and slim? sure, there's still the "other" version, whatever suits your needs.
Exactly!!!
Just like how the PSOne was more expensive than the PS1.
Or how the PSTwo was more expensive than the PS2.
Oh wait a minute, those slim down models that packed the same punch of their originals, were actually cheaper than their original counterparts - like every other game console or game handheld that proceeded them.
I guess by your (and Sony's) reckoning, when they release PSThree in October, it too should cost more than the PS3.
Here are the facts. Sony Computer Entertainment, has been hemorrhaging money ever since they introduced PSP and the UMD, especially since introducing PS3 and blu-ray. Whether you bought into the PS3 or not, Sony is now determined to make you, the consumer, pay for their blind mistakes. So while I will admit on any given day, that PSP Go looks awesome, and is the PSP Sony should have launched with in the first place (I said as much way back in 2004, when those idiots were claiming the PSP would be the 'Walkman of the 21st Century'), there is simply no way it is even remotely worth the $250 asking price . . . after being on the market for 5 years.
The only thing that could even justify the price point Sony is begging for (no one half-way intelligent, is even going to pay this much for it in it's current form), is if they added a 3G cellphone and an OLED, haptic feedback, touchscreen into the package. But as usual, when it comes to portable technology, Sony seems to be several years behind the curve. By the time they finally do get a proper cellphone and OLED screen in the PSP, Apple is going to have pretty much eaten up all of Sony's potential marketshare in the portable space. So it will be Apple dominating the high end of the spectrum and Nintendo dominating the low end, and the PSP increasingly getting squeezed out of more marketshare every quarter. But wait a moment. Isn't the exact same thing already happening to PSP?
Fact of the matter is, the existing PSP Go as well as PSP 3000, should have both seen a price drop to $150 when the PSP Go is launched. Then I could see it not only doing very well, but actually turning the tide in Sony's favor as they carved out a solid middle 'end' of the spectrum all to themselves. But unfortunately for Sony, they are not smart enough to figure that out for themselves - so it ain't happening.
If the PSP Go had surfaced with an OLED, haptic feedback touch screen and a UIQ-based, 3G cellphone, I could see them going toe-to-toe against the iPhone 3GS. Especially since mobile carrier subsidy would have seen a 3G enabled PSP Go retailing for only $200 (still lower than the price of Sony's current plans for PSP Go). But once again, Sony is not smart enough to figure out something so simple - so that ain't happening either.
If you really wanted to see Sony's long streak of bad fortune turn good, Sony should have launched the PSP Go in two flavors. One with the a UIQ-based, 3G phone, subsidized at $200 through GSM mobile carriers, and one without the 3G phone at $150, alongside a $150 PSP 3000. The $200 phone version competes directly against the iPhone 3GS, with equal telephoy capabilities and better gaming capabilities, while the $150 is not only at a price point where Apple cannot go with iPod Touch, but the price would be low enough to finally give Nintendo a run for it's money in the low end.
But instead of doing all of the logical steps they need to turn their long streak of bad fortune into good fortune, Sony has decided that their path to getting back into the black, is through ripping off the customers who want to be loyal to them. If that is honestly their philosophy for how they run their business, I hope they never, ever go back in the black.
I think it's worth the price. It's called marketing. People paid $600 for the first iPhones and they thought they were well worth it. I look at the market and what other product similar to the PSP GO I can get and I don't see any. I'd be really happy shelling out $300 for it, since it has no equal and I WANT IT.
"A fool and his money are easily parted." - Proverb
The modern era of man, seem to be chock full to no end of fools who have no clue what to do with money - witness our current economic crisis as proof. So yeah, the million idiots who paid $600 and $500 for the original iPhone, sure were happy with their purchase . . . until two months later Apple and AT&T were squeezed to lower the price of the device by $200 . . . and not pass the new price on to the fools who bought it at the higher price. And a year after that, they introduced the iPhone 3G at the even lower price of $200.
Even if those million marks were still happy anyway, despite getting ripped off by Apple and AT&T, their happiness, still does not make them any less the fool. They paid $400 too much, for nothing more than vanity. Now that the economy is shot to hell a couple years later, I wonder how many of them would kill to have that wasted $400 back in their pockets?
$300 for a PSP Go? I got some beach front property in Arizona I'd love to sell you with that.
don't buy it dude, not my fault you don't want it and still complain about it...would you buy it at $150? probably not. Now answer me this: what other portable device offers the features of the PSP Go
in America at $250? please, show them to me.
- Why read if you're not going to talk about it?
- Why talk if discussions are one-sided?
Besides, this is a U.K. site. Most people here aren't complaining about a $250 PSP. They're complaining about a $370 PSP. That changes the matter considerably.
Here are two devices that have all the features of the PSP under $250 -
With processors that are 2x faster.....ZOOM!!
thanks for participating, but no cigar.
It's nice to know they're officially screwing consumers.
Seriously? It's expensive because new things are supposed to be expensive. Wow! Not the R&D, not the parts, not anything. The official comment is - "Shit's always expensive when it first comes out"?!?!