So why not $1,500?

[JTK]

Originally Posted by dialog_gvf

Sony has to do a fine balancing act between pricing for the early adopters and not subsidizing them too heavily against the perception of the ultimate mass target audience and keeping them interested for when the prices do come down to their level.

If Sony had charged what the market will bear, the masses may have felt the price would NEVER get to their price point, and they might start looking elsewhere for their next-gen fix.

I wonder if announced pricing step-downs might have worked? Say, $999 until the end of the year, then $799 for next two months, and then settle to regular $599 pricing. That would actually send a message that Sony was aggressive in getting the price down. And $599 might appear to be a bargain relative to the early adopter price. Yet, they would actually be charging far more than originally planned.

Gary

Still a mistake. They're in 3DO territory, and then some, with pricing like that.

Look, we all know what this hardware is and that the PS3 is "more than a game console" but you all are arguing from an AV/HT standpoint, not a gamer's standpoint.

Their primary marketplace is still the gamers, and the gamers would not pay those kinds of figures for a game console.

People *****ed and moaned for months about $499 and $599 but ponied about anyways, as we've seen here this past week and in Japan the week before.


Digression:
I'm starting to really believe that these shortages are almost deliberate, to play a game of supply and demand.

I just think there's no excuse for a major manufacterer to launch a major product and not have enough supply to meet demand, or fairly close to it.

MS did it last year and it was inexcuseable and Sony did it now and it's equally inexcuseable.

Look at Nintendo: You've never seen them yet have a crazy "shortage" and they had plenty of Wii's ready to meet the hype and high demand.

People aren't getting robbed and shot over Nintendo Wiis. You aren't seeing crazy scalp jobs on Ebay for Wiis.

Nintendo did it right yet again. This is the way it's supposed to be done.