PS3's Price Announced

[Sanchez]

Sir Howard said the PS3 will sell for $300 to $400 and will come with a bundle of games, movies, and TV shows, many of which Sony also makes. The question is whether the titles will be bundled on Blu-ray DVD discs or on a built-in hard drive.

 

http://money.cnn.com/2005/11/21/technology/playstation_fortune_112805/

 

Good move on Sony's part. Providing they can shift enough software.

[Domstercool]

If that is the case then it is a tad cheaper than I thought it would be. I guess they are expecting lots of sales of software or something.

[Kav]

Hmmm, interesting.

[Pit-Jr]

I particularly like the bit about Sony jacking up the price of a stand-alone Blu-Ray player to $1000 to make the PS3 seem like a steal. Very crafty.....my hats off to your marketing team.

[CVD]

Heavy-Loss-Per-Console-Me-Do

[CooInTheZoo]

Looks like i WILL be getting a PS3 then. Well, probably.

[DiemetriX]

gr8 news cheap consoles for everyone

[Haver]

So that's like £325 for us then?

[rokhed00]

I don't think they can afford it to be honest, what with Sonys other divisions not doing too well Playstation is their main moneymaker. Their only hope is to make money on software, and with no actual games shown so far it's looking doubtful for any major sellers at launch.

[Android18a]

Awesome. I'd pay that. Final Fantasy XIV here I come!

[Hellfire]

If the price is that "low", great news for users. Of course that now Sony has to sell A LOT of PS3 to actually make some profit and they really need it. Still, people are suckers for Sony. But don't you think it's weird that Kutaragi said that it would be really expensive and then it's the same as 360 give or take? Anyway, it still is a lot of money, I think that past 250$ it's stupid.

[rokhed00]

Sony has to sell A LOT of PS3 to actually make some profit

Probably more than they can make before their launch window.

[Hellfire]

Probably more than they can make before their launch window.

Exactly, it seems that they're cornering themselves. They really need to make money, yet, instead of going towards a more profitable strategy with an affordable console that people would buy anyway, because it's called Playstation, they make a uber-powerful machine that probably isnt as great as they say and either a) they sell it for a lot of money, decreasing sales, but having profit per console or b) sell it cheaper, which guarantees more sales, but still no money.

[pedrocasilva]

How much does a Cell cost?

 

More than Sony would like

 

By Charlie Demerjian: Saturday 19 November 2005, 15:02

 

SO, HOW MUCH DOES a Cell cost? Other than the fact that you can't buy one right now, and the Playstation 3 is about a year out, it does cost money to make. From what we understand, each wafer run through the fab costs $9-10K, and IBM gets about 65 good chips per wafer. A quick look at the wafer shown at MPF shows that if these numbers are true, yields are not all that hot.

 

This would put each raw Cell on sale at a price tag of almost $150 give or take a bit. Toss in $25-30 for the packaging, and you are at a non-trivial number for a console. Assuming $175 for a 'solder to the board' working Cell, and you are at about half the cost of the console with just the CPU. Add in the GPU, RAM and a HD, and you are in loss-leader territory.

 

Hopefully yields will go up before the PS3 launches, there are about 200 good sites on the wafer, 2 per 'square', so there is room for IBM to knock $100 or so off the cost. Either way, it looks like IBM and Sony have a long uphill climb for the next console.

Source: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27809

I highly doubt that price is possible on-launch without cutting anything in the specs, unless they are in position of loosing a lot of money this generation... And accordingly the company situation... they can't afford it.

 

Also... if I recall correctly... the IBM PPC 750c on GameCube costed $20 on launch (with packaging) back in 2001... Cell is highly priced.

 

Blu ray support is alot more expensive than HD DVD from the hardware standpoint to the price per disc.

 

Even the Development price of the games is alot higher than on xbox 360

One of the reasons for this nightmare is soaring development costs.

 

The industry insider went on to say, “Kutaragi has said, ‘Please develop suitable software for PS3 - this software must not be of the same standard as PS2 software.’ Developing software for the PS3 from scratch will require an initial investment of at least 2 billion yen [uS $17.6 million] [not including development costs]. There are not many software companies that can easily afford that kind of money.â€

 

The prevailing rumor is that many software companies with difficulty may end up developing for the Xbox 360

Source: http://www.ps3focus.com/archives/127

 

Overall, everything seems more expensive, thus the same price as x360 is impossible unless someone pays what the consumer does not (hardware sold at loss? can sony afford it?)

[Kurtle Squad]

So that's like £325 for us then?

 

It'll probably be more. Things are cheaper in America...much cheaper!!

[Jamba]

Ok time to be blunt.

 

PSP is selling really well in US and not that bad in the rest of the world, UK especially. However it is not rolling in Sony much money at all as about 75% of the people I know have hacked their PSP. It's kinda like opening the door to the original PSX pirating. So all hardware sales and quite low software sales make the PSP a fairly unprofitable venture so far.

 

Now they have the PS3, selling at a (from what we can tell) big loss. Again this will be another very large financial strike to the Sony wallet. And they are doing this for 3 main reasons I can guess:

1) A competitive price vs. the xbos360

2) Helps promote a justified use of HDTV, a Sony product.

3) Makes a massive increase in BluRay penetration, again a sony product.

 

But isn't this just a bit of a tight squeeze even for those reasons?

[evad_lhorg]

hmmm i wonder..... seems a bit too cheap especialy to come with games and movies.

 

how many dollars does an xbox 360 full system cost?

[Pit-Jr]

Thats a very generous price on the hardware side, but how much is software gonna cost and are people really ready to replace their DVD players, burners, and DVD movies that theyve spent so much money on?

 

EDIT- heres a 'slightly' biased IGN feature dissing the 360 and heralding the PS3 as the be-all end-all. View with buyers remorse.

 

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/668/668446p1.html

[dukkadukka]

Thats a very generous price on the hardware side, but how much is software gonna cost and are people really ready to replace their DVD players, burners, and DVD movies that theyve spent so much money on?

 

EDIT- heres a 'slightly' biased IGN feature dissing the 360 and heralding the PS3 as the be-all end-all. View with buyers remorse.

 

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/668/668446p1.html

interesting article. it makes me feel a little better that i'm not getting a 360 this christmas. i've "wasted" too much money on the gamecube and dreamcast(although it was amazing and had some of my favourite games on it), eventually having to buy the no.1 console because there's so much i'm missing out on. as a student now i can't afford to buy more than one console this generation, and ps3 is the safest option in my opinion.

[Guest Jordan]

PS3 just seems to have so many pointless features.

7 joypads on a single screen? Jesus christ, imagine that on split screen.

1080p? about 0.1% of people will even be able to run that. HD hasn't even taken off here yet! 720p is the most you're gunna need reguardless...

 

The point is, we will not know how really powerful the 360 and PS3 are untill they come to market with the same 3rd party game. Thats the only way to be really sure.

[Domstercool]

Well PS2 can have 8pads because games like PES support it.

[Hellfire]

interesting article. it makes me feel a little better that i'm not getting a 360 this christmas. i've "wasted" too much money on the gamecube and dreamcast(although it was amazing and had some of my favourite games on it), eventually having to buy the no.1 console because there's so much i'm missing out on. as a student now i can't afford to buy more than one console this generation, and ps3 is the safest option in my opinion.

I don't think there's a safe option right now, regarding next-gen, it all depends on the games and personal taste.

[Caris]

Still looks like a Breadbin For Banana's

[mike-zim]

interesting article. it makes me feel a little better that i'm not getting a 360 this christmas. i've "wasted" too much money on the gamecube and dreamcast(although it was amazing and had some of my favourite games on it), eventually having to buy the no.1 console because there's so much i'm missing out on. as a student now i can't afford to buy more than one console this generation, and ps3 is the safest option in my opinion.

 

I cant see how paying £350+ for a console is the safest option. assuming the rev comes out at about £200 you would be able to buy a delux Rev bundle for the same price as just the PS3 console.

[dukkadukka]

rev sounds great but i know if i spent £200 on it, within a year i'd spend £350 on a ps3 aswell. i can't afford to buy more than one console, and judging by past performances sony will satisfy me most out of the three.