Although there was a veritable avalanche of exciting announcements at E3 2009, there was one thing that no one announced: A console price-cut. One industry big-wig, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, was disappointed that all the major platforms are holding prices steady.
"I was disappointed not to see any sort of aggressive price cutting," Kotick said to Bloomberg. "Of all the things that the hardware companies need to be doing right now, it's recognizing the difficulties of the economy and pricing their hardware appropriately."
If you've been following the game behind the video game game, you already know that a price cut is being called for, predicted, and expected from all corners of the industry, particularly for the Sony PlayStation 3, but as yet, the company has not bowed to the pressure of the calls. Here are just some of the people who have called for or predicted a price cut in the last few months: Janco Partners analyst Mike Hickey, Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg, Wedbush Morgan Securities video game analyst Michael Pachter, some guy I met on a train, Electronic Arts CFO Eric Brown, Media Molecule co-founder Alex Evans and many others.
But what do you think? Is the hardware for the PS3, 360 and Wii too expensive? Or is this a case of Activision's interests being served by console price-cuts at the expensive of hardware manufacturers?
