Console Notes
I've gotten quite a few e-mails today about this (from Gamespot):http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/08/02/news_6129862.html.
Buried in an analyst's memo, written shortly after last week's Electronic Arts earnings call, was a hidden gem. According to the widely read team at Wedbush Morgan Securities, Sony may delay the release of the PlayStation 3 until 2007--if exactly the right conditions prevail.
Then the article goes on to blah blah blah about Sony maybe cutting the price of the PS2 to "distract" people from the Xbox 360 launch and a bunch of other not terribly rational lines of reasoning that add up to a hole with no dirt in it.
Relax. This was written by a securities firm to generate publicity for themselves. Again. They get told "invent a different take", they do, and the press jumps on it, even if it's not even remotely credible.
It's safe at this point to assume that Xbox 360 will launch at $299. Microsoft will sell every unit they can make for the holiday season. Delaying the launch of the PS3 just puts Sony in position to get kicked in the head.
Here's why. Anyone who wants a PS2 has already bought one. No one is going to buy a PS2 at $99 instead of the next-gen Xbox 360 at $299, because those consumer groups, at this point, are mutually exclusive. They're not competing products, and that means that increasing the price delta (which would be highly effective for like products) isn't going to matter. It's not going to "distract" anyone from the 360 launch. Nobody gives a rat's ass what the PS2 sells for. It's dead, Jim.
Here's the other reason: used games. EB and Gamestop will do anything they can to stop you from buying a new game for the PS2 (or the Xbox). The user base is so massive for the PS2 that the market is drowning in pre-owned software. That's not going to make Sony any money.
Sony already knows that pre-orders for the 360, even without a price or a release date, are unbelievably high. What they don't understand is why: this is the first console to get released after gaming truly reached critical mass. There's a huge demand for new, better hardware. We are in a different world than when the PS2 launched.
I saw another "analyst" article yesterday that posited, incredibly, that a $499 launch price wouldn't really hurt PS3 sales. That's um, stupid, because the PS3 is in direct competition with the Xbox 360. Fifty dollar delta? Maybe. Two hundred? Forget it.
One last note. It also appears now that the first batch of Xbox 360 games will be priced at $59.99, and people are howling. I guess they've forgotten that other consoles have had $59.99 games at launch, but that the price is quickly dropped to $49.99 after a few months. Games are not any more expensive as a whole than they were fifteen years ago, and the fierce competition is going to ensure that they'll stay that way through the next generation.
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