Susan Arendt
Culture

Analyst: $100 PS3 Price Cut Not Enough to Move Systems

A price cut of $100 isn’t going to be enough to move PS3s off the shelves, says Bank of America’s Michael L. Savner. A cut of $200 would be more likely to woo consumers into inviting Sony’s console into their homes, but Savner thinks it’s pretty unlikely that such a big cut is forthcoming. The […]

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A price cut of $100 isn't going to be enough to move PS3s off the shelves, says Bank of America's Michael L. Savner. A cut of $200 would be more likely to woo consumers into inviting Sony's console into their homes, but Savner thinks it's pretty unlikely that such a big cut is forthcoming.

The key factors that Savner sees preventing mass adoption of the PS3 should come as no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention: the console's high price, its lack of exclusives, and utter consumer ambivalence over Blu-ray.

Interestingly, Savner also sees the success of the Wii, in particular over the PS3, ultimately as a bad thing for the industry:

[Viewed] at a macro level, the share shift currently taking place where the Wii, and even the PS2, are the share takers, our concern is that if software sales also begin to skew along those lines that publishers will be trading higher wholesale revenue (PS3 and Xbox 360) for lower wholesale revenue (Wii and PS2). Moreover, this is coming at a time when publishers are continuing to increase R&D spending for the more expensive platforms. Lastly, while certain 3rd party publishers like Ubisoft, EA and Activision have shown some success on the Wii, Nintendo remains the dominant publisher on its platform.

PS3 Price Cut Too Little Too Late [Businessweek]