There’s An Upside To Poor PS3 Sales?
Apparently so. According to Sony’s CEO, Nobuyuki Oneda, bad news is the good news when it comes to PlayStation 3. Sales have risen in recent reports, however not quite as high as Sony expected… considering the PS3 is priced below production costs, money is lost on each purchase of the game system. Not as many sales means not as much money lost, so you do kinda win.
Sony has lowerd the retail price of the PlayStation 3 console to better compete with Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii. A recent $100 price cut in North America, which followed a similar cut in Japan, resulted in the aforementioned sales surge.
Despite the cut, the PlayStation 3 is still priced significantly higher than the Wii, and continues to lag well behind it in sales. Sony recently reported sales of 710,000 PlayStation 3 consoles for the quarter (up to June), resulting in an operating loss of $243 million. Nintendo, meanwhile, reported 3.43 million Wii systems sold in the same quarter - pretty much putting the smack down on Sony, who hopes to start making a profit around Christmas of 2008 (yea, that’s Xmas after next).
Xbox 360 Prices Getting Slashed said,
Wrote on August 3, 2007 @ 2:43 pm
[…] like Bill and crew are trying to keep up with the recent surge in PS3 sales, they say content is king but what good’s all that content if nobody’s […]