When Will PS3 Price Drop?

[jankren]

Recently, I have decided to get myself a unit of PS3 instead of a new medium quality PC. However, before immediately throwing away my $500, I would be willing to wait for a while longer if PS3 price was going to drop in the near future. So does anyone know about any reliable rumor regarding this?

By the way, I have a question about PS3. I heard that currently Sony loses $150 for every unit of PS3 they sell. So Im wondering what the **** is the point of selling stuff which produce money loss instead of profit? I honestly fail to see the logic.

Peace,

[Justinian]

They make money off game licensing and such. The games make the money with every console, not the console itself.

[Freddie]

They make money off game licensing and such. The games make the money with every console, not the console itself.

In fact Sony sell there console at a loss but even Sony can only subsidise there hardware by so much before it becomes too unprofitable to manufacture. This article fromisuppli suggests that a PS3 costs over $800 to build, so that means Sony makes a $300 loss on each unit. And as you said to recover that they make money on each licensed game some publishes for the console, according to Forbes half the money goes to the developers, the rest is divided up between the retailers, distributors, the license fee and the publishers (who get by far the smallest cut), so even if Sony got $15 per game sold that means Sony would need each console buyer to fork out $60 20 times just to breakeven and as far as I know there aren’t 20 games for the PS3 let alone 20 games worth buying. Years ago when I still a console fan I must have only ever had perhaps 20-25 games tops for my Sega Saturn, and some of them were second hand or swaps.

Far be it for me to spam or hijack a thread, I thought Sony put out a press statement last month saying a PS3 price cut was due for North America and Japan/Asia?

[mrmouth]

Far be it for me to spam or hijack a thread, I thought Sony put out a press statement last month saying a PS3 price cut was due for North America and Japan/Asia?

It dropped $100 I believe. So its what, $499 now I believe.

[Freddie]

It dropped $100 I believe. So its what, $499 now I believe.

Us Brits are getting ripped off to the max! A PS3 over here costs £414 and Americans only have to $499 when the exchange rate is just over two $'s to £. If prices refelcted exchange rates then Americans should be paying $1000's per PS3.

[boboftl]

Just remember that only the 60 gig model is 500 and whenever that runs out its back to the original price of 600 for the 80 gig model. Also the 60 gig model is the only PS3 thats able to run all of the PS2 games while the other PS3 moels can't.

[Doono]

This is fairly common practice, it happened with the PS1, PS2, Xbox, Xbox 360 and probably happening with the Wii as well. As development costs drop the price gap drops.
They probably won't make much profit off the first generation PS3's because they require each person to buy at least 3 or 4 games to cover the loss before any profit is made. But lower production costs means they can cut the price as we are seeing now, they have obviously found a way to produce it alot cheaper to slash the price by $100 or whatever the price cut is.

[Gary88]

@ everyone, its called the gillette principle because they razor was the first ever disposable product (and used said marketing strategy)

@jankren

"and peter said unto the congregation 'and at the time that Jesus shall walk the earth a second time, he shall bring fourth the word of God and reasonably priced sony bundles'"

(i wanted to spice up the whole 'when hell freezes over' response)