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?
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N8R
I don't think the competition between consoles is half as rampant and/or important as we the fans make it out to be.
Besides, for something like a video console, you want to drop the price either in September, or right before Halloween. Something to boost sales for the holidays. I guess people thought Sony would see the "error in their ways" by E3 this year for NOT dropping the price last Christmas like everybody else did... I think it was bold and smart, personally. Look at the situation we got coming up this Christmas.
MS - probably won't go lower, but will probably drop HDD prices as Sandrock wisely aforementioned in another thread.
Nintendo - probably CAN'T go lower.
Sony - ...is in the best position to be "all the rage" this holiday season.
If you wanted to make money, why plan for E3 when you should be planning for Christmas?
TurnBackThePendulum
What a greedy jerk, I mean lowering the price of the console's means more sells of games right. That jerk doesn't care about the economy he just wants more $ in his pockets. Like he cant afford consoles.
cmdluke
you know, i was pretty disappointed with Activition's booth at E3 this year. nothing all that interesting going on there.
BONERJAM
Yet they charge $60 for every GH and COD game even thou they come out every year(COD) or every two months(GH).
Socalmic47
And in other news, Video games fans are disappointed in Activision's complete lack of originality as they dry hump the same game titles sequel after sequel, year after year. It was later found out that Kotick was an agent of Satan and had a holy water soaked wood stake driven trough his heart... and there was much rejoicing.
cmdluke
Here's an idea: instead of complaining about the consoles being too expensive, how about cutting the price of games.
I pay 500 once for my ps3 and get countless hours of use out of it. i pay 60 for a game many, many times, and sometimes only get about 10 hours out of a particular game.
now tell me who needs to cut their prices?
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