Sony Cuts PS3 Price to $250 / 25k Yen / 249 Euros

i guess they forgot about that place... and Switzerland too

hope so,that would be sweet

Down from $500 to $350 in Australia according to a poster here

in the US... hell yes. Globally it won comfortably.

for the avoidance of confusion... I said holiday, December.

of course, what would an argument be without cherry picked examples? Holiday last year, 360 went in with kinect's several hundred million dollar ad campaign, a slim redesign, the inclusion of storage in the cheapest version, and many big box stores were giving hundred dollar gift cards with every purchase, not to mention HALO and fable.

360 cleaned up last year because of a bounty of worthy reasons, and ps3 had what, exactly, GT5?

MS did ALL of that, and just barely beat out ps3 globally..under 5%.

Dropping the price this October 2 months after ps3s price drop is not going to put a scratch in the overall numbers. You know this.

exactly

ps3 went into last holiday with no new game (except GT5), and the same price as the year before and still was statistically tied against 360 which had THE flagship title, HALO, a flagship RPG FABLE, the OMGAWSHUM Kinect, new slim model, and pretty much consistent retailer price drop, with an upgrade on the cheapest model.

If they couldn't clean up a full year after a price drop with 2 flagship games, slim model, and kinect, they sure ain't gunna do it with a 50$ price drop 2 months after sony's.

But 360 outsold PS3 during the holidays. For November and December alone the 360 sold 984k (basically 1 million) more units then PS3. If they can do that again this year, then annual PS3/360 sales will be even.

Also I wouldn't call Fable THE FLAGSHIP RPG. LOL, maybe flagship 1st party exclusive RPG, but not the best by far. New Slim model was also 6 months old at the time.

Anything can happen this year, If Kinect and 360 both get price cuts, then oh boy it will be interesting.

@michael
It doesn't matter that the redesign came mid-year. A majority of the demographic gets big purchases for Christmas. I'm sure you remember being a kid and wanting a console, after all. The same thing happened with the ps3 redesign and pricedrop, sales boosted dramatically for a month or so, then started to level about 20% over, then during Christmas, it was right back up again.

And I'm not saying fable is the best rpg. I'm saying it's a flagship. Flagship= mascot-esque type games. Like metroid/link/mario is to nintendo, master chief, gears, fable is to microsoft.

Besides, look already what MS is doing. They're giving away 360s for FREE with the purchase of a windows computer of 700$. FREE.

If on top of that, ms drops the price on the consoles they do sell, well then they're getting desperate

Prof your anti MS rants really don't help your cause. Sony's price cut should have a good impact on sales but you look foolish when you claim a company like MS is desperate. Ms has done a great job of keeping a six year old console trending up in sales and increasing their income and revenue at the same time. There is nothing desperate about MS or for that matter Sony. They are both doing well and attracting customers.

@scat
You're just looking for a rant that isn't there.

Or, you're goalposts are closer to the 50 yard line than mine are.

I never claimed MS is getting desperate. I said that if MS is willing to both drop the price and give away consoles for free (which are being tracked by NPD as sold fyi), then I'd consider them as desperate.

It's no great myth that ps3 is catching up in sales, while 360 has had a price advantage and is currently giving away the product for free. IF they decide to drop price, it will be because they have "abandoned" (using the term loosely) chasing profit, and are more concerned about "beating" the competition in sales.

Perhaps "desperate" is too strong a word, but I would call voluntary loss of profit in an attempt to preserve a small symbolic lead just that. And it is preservation, otherwise they wouldn't respond at all, and drop price according to their own pricing strategy.

You can't apply trends with the PS3 Slim & Price drop to the 360 Slim because a) it came out in late august, right before the holiday season, not in spring like the 360 did. b) It came with a price cut.

The 360 Slim came out in August, and did not come with a price cut. I doubt any boost the system got persisted longer then Halo's release, and even then it's only because MS released the slim regionally over 2 months.

Yea MS is giving free 360 consoles with $700 computers, but Recently PS3 was bundled with Black Ops and Black Ops was free. Remember the 18% jump for Americas region only two weeks after E3? Sales difference was <5% then, now it's 15%. It's not just MS that is pushing consoles in unique ways.

WAIT, WAIT, WAIT. If MS drops the price on the 360 to match or cut the PS3's price they are getting desperate? So only Sony is allowed to cut price globally, and MS is not? WOW.

Got a lot of thumbs on my first post, I think more people agree with me bro. Anything can happen. If 360 and Kinect both get $50 price cuts, then you can get a Kinect 360 for $200, just a little more then a Wii. That could do anything.

what do you mean, "match"? There is already a 199 xbox, is there not?

To address your point about the slim release dates, I was never comparing the sales and saying ps3 sold better. I said that a console will come out during the year, and due to the price generally being outside of what a typical young teen can afford, it becomes a christmas present. I simply used the ps3 as evidence that sales can be up, go down, and then resurface in the holiday, because consoles tend to be gifts for a good portion of the demographic. My point had nothing to do with comparing their sales ability, and everything to do with sales trends over the course of a year.

You say that the slim was june 15th and released regionally over 2 months (to august 15th no less), and then say, "I doubt sales persisted". That paragraph is just meaningless words backed up without evidence, just arbitrary conjecture. You have no evidence showing the sales potential of a specific feature. I don't have a lot proving my point either, but it is a fact that console sales get pushed to christmas season.

About black ops being free, what's your point? PS3s have bundled games all the time, as does MS with the 360, that's nothing new, it's not unique in any sense of the word. In this deal they are simply giving away consoles. You can buy an HP, or Dell, Toshiba etc, this isn't a bundle in the same way. In a bundled console, the idea is to promote the sale of your own product, ie the console. Giving away xboxes with pc does neither promote sales of xbox, nor promote sales of pcs(which isn't even their product). Think about what time of year it is. It is the moving away to college time of year, where almost every college student will receive a new laptop or computer.


Those thumbs are the same 3 or 4 people who are thumbing me down and thumbing the pro-xbox arguments up. Don't confuse an anonymous rating system of 3 or 4 with intrinsic value. If MS were to give 360 and kinect a 100$ price drop within a year of kinect releasing (a peripheral which Ballmer himself said would extend the generation by 5 years), it would be desperate, because how does your pricing strategy now work for those next five years? And why would you cut the price of a product which is the fastest selling tech device of all time? It just wouldn't make sense to do for this holiday.

Since I got a thumbs down for my last reply, let me show you what you are wrong about.
You are wrong that sales resulting from new features and price drops do not get pushed into the holiday.
You are wrong that bundling a game for free is "unique", and you are wrong to compare that with the free 360 deal.
You are wrong to imply that I think "only sony can drop price globally". Sony is dropping price according to a standard sales model using demand. If MS dropped price, it would be outside the demand model.
And you are wrong that 360 and kinect will each get a 50$ price drop.

It was almost obvious there will be price drop this year and that it will be annouced at gamescon after it wasn't revelead at E3.