With the desperate financial position Sony is finding itself in you wouldn’t think that they’d be overly keen on giving their star performer, the PS3, a price cut and therefor dropping their profit margin even further.
However according to Michael Pachter that is exactly what they are going to be doing. The current cost of manufacturing a PS3 is apparently $200 and that is now what the new price point for the PS3 will be after E3.
The plan is to cut out the profit they are making on the device but then increase the profits they’ll make from the software and PSN+ side of business due to the huge uptake in sales that would be expected after such a drastic price cut.
This price cut would be a 20% price drop bringing the local price down to around R2400 for the 160Gb model making it a direct price competitor to the Xbox 360 4Gb.
But it’s not only price cuts that are expected at Sony’s E3 event, according to Pachter the event will be all about games, unlike Microsoft who are simply focussing on multimedia services and software Sony are targeting their core gamer market and will be showcasing games, games and more games.
It’s a preferred angle in my opinion and one that could help them steal back their American audience from Microsoft and help push them back into second place worldwide if Microsoft isn’t careful
The only negative side effect for Sony here is that you’d have to be insane to buy a PS3 now, rather wait until the second week of June and get it for a couple of hundred rand cheaper.
Last Updated: May 14, 2012
