Playstation 3 released in Japan

[Hitman]

Playstation 3 released in Japan

[drew and not u]

I can't wait to get one.... a year from now.... maybe.

[garetjax]

Yahoo did a story on the PS3 as well. It goes into a little more detail about Sony's expected lost revenue on the console as well as some other tidbits of information.

Such as when Sony released the PS3 in Japan, they cut the price of each unit by 20 percent, selling each console for the tidy sum of $420.00 US dollars:

"In an unprecedented move, Sony slashed the price for the cheaper PS3 model in Japan ahead of its launch by 20 percent to about $420 in what some critics have scorned as a desperate effort to maintain market share in the face of intense competition with Nintendo Co.'s Wii console and Microsoft Corp.'s XBox"

"Sony will be losing money for a some time on each PS3 sold because of the high costs for research and production that went into the highly sophisticated machine [...] Sony expects to lose $1.7 billion in its gaming division in the fiscal year through March 2007."

"Prices vary by retailer, but the more expensive model, with a 60-gigabyte drive, sells in Japan for about $510."

"There may not be enough machines to go around, and people will buy Wii and Xbox," Osawa said. "For all you know, it may take Sony five years to get back the money it's invested in PS3, even 10 years if it doesn't watch out."

Full story here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061111/...n_playstation3

[fps justin]

thats too bad for sony. However, 420 USD isn't so bad. I thought it would be quite a bit more than that.

[gvblake22]

Originally Posted by garetjax

"Sony will be losing money for a some time on each PS3 sold because of the high costs for research and production that went into the highly sophisticated machine [...] Sony expects to lose $1.7 billion in its gaming division in the fiscal year through March 2007."

Ya know, that might just be a good time to do some investing! Buy some Sony stocks when the price hits a low point from this whole thing and then hang on to 'em for a while until the PS3 takes hold and then sell them for a good profit!

[jph1589]

Originally Posted by garetjax

"In an unprecedented move, Sony slashed the price for the cheaper PS3 model in Japan ahead of its launch by 20 percent to about $420 in what some critics have scorned as a desperate effort to maintain market share in the face of intense competition with Nintendo Co.'s Wii console and Microsoft Corp.'s XBox"

OK........maybe I wasn't an economics major.....but then again the principles they teach in economics don't seem to apply anymore anyway. So I read an article this morning about how they only released 100,000 units for sale in Japan and the retailers had to hold lotteries for the people who had waited in line all night, so that they wouldn't riot. They expected that every unit was sold within the first 12 hours. So what rocket scientist executive decided the price cut was needed?

I don't get it.

They aren't doing that in the USA by the way. The price is already set and in a lot of cases the systems are already pre-ordered and prepaid. But I don't think they expect people standing in line for it anyway. They only allocated 6 of the low end units to each Bestbuy store and 10 of the high end units. And they took orders in advance for those I believe. The total initial allocation for the USA is 400,000 and they expect to sell 6 million by spring.

I don't think so. Not at these prices.

[garetjax]

Originally Posted by jph1589

So what rocket scientist executive decided the price cut was needed?

This might explain why:

"Sony will be losing money for a some time on each PS3 sold because of the high costs for research and production that went into the highly sophisticated machine [...] Sony expects to lose $1.7 billion in its gaming division in the fiscal year through March 2007."