PlayStation 3: Not About Quantity, About Profitability

The Xbox 360 price drop rumors flow like water and it’s all but officially been announced at this point. What about PlayStation 3 and their price? No.

Nobuyuki Oneda, the Sony’s chief financial officer said, “our plan is not to reduce the price. Our strategy is not to sell more quantity for PS3 but to concentrate on profitability.” (gamespot) This makes complete sense coming from their chief financial officer, as their motivation is to make money, not lose it.

The question remains, how will they actually make money if they’re no longer in the race for competitive market prices? Considering game licensing must Net them some amount of profit Sony’s idea seems to be the exact opposite of their original PlayStation method: saturate the market and sell them all games.

So far we’ve seen very few “need to have” games for the PlayStation 3 console while Xbox 360 continues to build a substantial library and Wii continues to break sales records for apparently no reason. When a game publisher has to decide on a platform to launch a new game, why would they choose the one that doesn’t care to be competitively priced in the market? The one that doesn’t care about quantity of sales?

Sony intends to reverse the entire razor blade philosophy where one sells a cheap razor and charges users for the blades over and over again. Their take on this concept is to sell really expensive razors and put out small half-quality blades. Is that a good market strategy at this point?

0 thoughts on “PlayStation 3: Not About Quantity, About Profitability”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Post

Episode 226: Line SteppingEpisode 226: Line Stepping

This week’s episode is light on news but heavy on features, as the Gaming Flashback checks in on the coin-op arcade classic I, Robot, while the Gaming History takes a look at the career of Danielle Bunten Berry.

As for the news, the gang comments on the following items:

This week’s Question of the Week: What board games, if any, do you love to play? Let us know!

Episode 679: E3 WaningEpisode 679: E3 Waning

A lot is going on with Twitch, as the company continues to be terribly run. Microsoft is also making sure the Activison-Blizzard acquisition goes through, and Resident Evil 4 is fun.

The news includes:

  • Life By You is coming for Sims 4, with early access confirmed for 2023
  • Respawn opens third studio as it targets 10-15 year lifespan for Apex Legends
  • Ghostwire: Tokyo is getting an expanded campaign, a roguelite mode, and a dodge button
  • Microsoft confirms it won’t have a show floor presence at E3 2023

Let us know what you think.

Episode 382: Late But Not Too LateEpisode 382: Late But Not Too Late

Due to unforeseen circumstances, this episode was recorded on Monday, but despite the lateness, it’s full of rich news items, including some very disturbing trends in videogames, as well as a question by a listener that got mental juices flowing. This week’s Gaming Flashback isĀ Professor Pac-Man.

The news items include:

  • Headteachers in UK threaten to report parents who let their children play 18-rated games
  • Star Citizen‘s Vanguard “concept” fighter costs a cool $250
  • PC version of Dead or Alive 5 Last Round launches on Steam without key features
  • Zelda delay could ruin Nintendo’s 2015
  • New Jersey game store “swatting” takes an uglier turn

This week’s Question of the Week: “What do you think is the future of older games?”