(from the Left Hand vs. Right Hand department)
Hi everyone,
Interesting news in the blogosphere this morning. There's a fracas going on over at Sony about the recent price drops in the 60gig model of the PS3.
The battle started with the president of SCEE - that's Sony Europe - stating that the U.S. didn't really get a price cut. Instead, they got a bigger hard drive and a pack-in game for the same $599 price. The $499 price reduction on the 60gig model was, to paraphrase, a "fire sale" to get the model out of the warehouses, and would be out of stock by the end of July.
This came as a big surprise to SCEA (Sony America). They've countered the fire sale argument saying: "As we announced this week, SCEA’s product offering in North America consists of a 80GB PS3 available in August and a 60GB PS3 available now for $499. We will have ample supplies of both models to meet the needs of consumers for the foreseeable future."
So - who's right? Well - let's let the president of Sony Computer Entertainment, Kaz Hirai, weigh in:
"[We do not] have a 2 SKU strategy in the US, we learned very quickly customers respond better to having one SKU than two. We dropped the price on the 60GB model, as you know that model is no longer in production, once it's no longer on store shelves it will just be the $600 SKU."
Sounds like it's a little of both, then, really.
Cheers,
Paul
P.S. Don't forget - the 60gig model is one of the last PS3s with the PS2 EE chip in it.
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1 comment:
I don't think this is a matter of having customers respond better to a single SKU, as it is having customers responding at all.
There's never really been enough of a differentiator between the two models to justify the more expensive one. Although I'm shooting from the hip (to put it politely), I have to believe the super-deluxe PS3 is a niche market within' the PS3 market.
I can easily see Sony believing that by removing the less expensive model, everyone will happily fork over the extra-cash to own the new single-sku PS3.
I can also see why SCEA doesn't want this to be considered a "fire sale." That has negative connotations -- mainly that the manufacturer is abandoning the product. No one wants to spend $500 to own something that is perceived to be unsupported by the manufacturer.
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