Update :
By the time this article was finished, Sony had already denied David Reeves' end of 60 GB PS3 announcement and then admitted it. Here is Sony's final announcement:
" The 60GB PS3 will be available in North America for $499 until supplies of that unit are depleted. We have ample inventory to meet the immediate needs of consumers in this territory for several months to come. We won't be making any further announcements regarding our PS3 model hardware strategy in North America until the 60GB model is exhausted and market conditions are evaluated".
Original Story :
Although Peter Moore is the Corporate Vice President for Sony's rival, Microsoft's Xbox division, but his comments regarding Sony's recent North American $100 price cut seems genuinely insightful. "I didn't see a price cut, and I must have been reading the wrong thing. It's still USD 499 and USD 599", said Moore. "They've added greater value at the same prices. Which to me is not a price cut", he added.
"I don't want to be anal, but I read "price cut" and I expected to see USD 399," Peter Moore continued, "When I hear the words "price cut" I expect to see a price cut".
Moore's opinion is shared by Capcom Chief Financial Officer Kazuhiko Abe, who expects Sony to cut PS3's price again before 2008. the price has been cut once and it is likely to be cut again towards the end of the year. I expect the (PS3's) installed base to grow gradually", said Abe.
On the other side, Mark Beaumont -Capcom's head of consumer software publishing in North America, South America and Europe- believes that PS3 is held back by its lack of titles, not by its high price. "I would say Sony's product portfolio has had more to do with holding them back than the price point of the hardware itself", said Beaumont. "They are still the cheapest Blu-ray player in the marketplace, so that's going to additionally help them to put more units out there. You may very well look at that and wonder if people are just watching movies or if they're actually playing games as well; that's something that has to improve over time", he added.
Turns out, Peter Moore is right. Playstation 3's Price -literally- is not a price cut at all. Sony has officially announced that two weeks from now, the $499 60GB PS3 model won't be available any more.
"what the U.S. are offering from the 1st of August is a USD 599 version with one game. All they're doing is taking their stock in trade that they've got at the moment of the 60GB model, marking the price down and it will all be gone by the end of July", was what Sony Europe president David Reeves said in a recent interview. The interviewer then clarified Reeves' answer by asking, "So once the 60GB is gone, that will be the end of the 60GB then?" and Reeves replied: "In America, yes"".
So, as soon as the $499 60GB models are sold out, PlayStation 3's price will rise back up to $599. In other words: Sony just added 20 Giga Bytes of Hard Disk space to Playstation 3 while removing it emotion engine (PS2 backward compatibility) chip.
But, would Sony lower the 80 GB PS3 model price? Our analysis says: Most probably, yes. We have already stated several times that it is -relatively- overpriced. We were also surprised with the "60 GB PS3 price cut" timing. We have been expecting a $100 to $150 price by Christmas, and our expectation still hold true.
