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?
@Notch selling Mojang to Microsoft: I was a bit apprehensive when I first heard this story. Though we have no confirmation I’m taking the silence as to mean a deal is being discussed and nothing is finalized yet. The more I thought about it and after listening to your take on it I think it could be alright. I’m just concerned with what they might charge for using the PC version. I’ve also come to be used to Mojang having added features with each new version release and I hope that continues. I’m not so bothered by Notch selling the company since he’s walked away from Minecraft when he did the Full release a couple years ago. I hope that we will also still be able to use our own custom skins, resource packs and mods for the PC.
@Good games worth paying for: I do agree with the sentiment that quality games are indeed worth paying for. Like Skyrim was and I’m sure a lot of hard work went into that game. The quote “a terrible game lasts forever” is right when you have the Atari ET as an example.
@80’s shows: I got both the Dungeons and Dragons and Captain N show references , I loved both shows as a kid.
@FFVI: I knew I had forgotten to mention Terra from FF6, I feel that the first half of that game was about Terra and Celeste the second half the game. I remember the argument I got in with my friend over this when he noticed that I wasn’t using Edgar or Locke in my party and he questioned me “Why aren’t I using the main guys?” My response was “what main guys? Terra and Celeste are the heros and he got so mad and yelled at me that Edgar was the hero. How can he be the hero, or Locke, when you can beat the game without them at all? More over the whole story revolved around the Espers and the empire trying to use them.
And just FYI I am a guy but that doesn’t mean I can’t emphasize with women or feel rejected when I hear things like “Girls won’t like you if you play games, why don’t you play a sport instead?”
I also did misunderstand your point Paul, thanks for clearing it up.
@QOTW: I remember making a few custom units in CIV 2 and using the map editor. I’ve played around with programs like RPG Maker and other similar RPG games like Neverwinter. The amount of work in making even the smallest dungeons or quests is just tremendous so I have to give it to those who make entire games worth of content and quality work. You do get what you pay for.