Sony Playstation 3 Price Drop Announced

Last week at the E4 Video Game Convention, the Sony company announced a new price drop for their failing sales generator, the Playstation 3. There are two models available for the Playstation 3 video game system. The original system features a 40gb hard drive the newer system features a 60gb hard drive. There was a 80gb system made In late 2007 as special promotion, but I never heard about it again after the holiday season (does anyone have one?).

The original pricing scheme for the 40gb Playstation 3 was listed at $599 while the 60gb upgrade system was running $699 (and that promotional 80gb I saw in stores was around $799). Coming out with this system at almost the same time as its closest competitor, the Microsoft XBOX 360, Sony was forced to run several promotions in order to try to get the sales for this system in the United States to start taking off. During the holiday 2007 season, Sony authorized a deal for a few days only that buyers could get up to ten free Blu-ray movies with the purchase of the $499 60gb system(just after its first price drop). The sales generated from this event were not known to the public. I remember looking at this deal when our local Walmart was being told about it and I thought it was a great deal. With Blu-ray discs running $30 a piece, I was saving $300 on a $500 system.

After another year of unsteady sales and not reaching the record success that the previous release (the Playstation 2) had, the Sony company has announced this is was dropping the price of the Playstation 3 again. Now the 40gb system is selling for around $399 and the 60gb is listed at $499. But will this recent price drop be enough to achieve the sales goal that Sony has been hoping for? I really do not think so. The PS3 has two other major competitors out there right now (the Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii), both of which started off with lower starting console prices than the PS3. The games for a PS3 system have not changed since the release and that averages about $60 per game. The accessories for this system are also way overpriced and have not been changed either (a new standard controller for this system runs $49). This new lower base system price is still higher than all of the variations of the competitors systems.

I don't believe that the Sony Company has done a great job on planning and selling this PS3 system, and at this point I don't think a $399 price tag is going to be the solution.