Sony Would Drop UK PS3 Price, But It Doesn’t Want To Annoy People

SCEE president, David Reeves, speaking to unofficial Sony mouthpiece, ThreeSpeech, has said that the reason the UK (and presumably the rest of Europe) isn’t getting a price cut along with the US is because they don’t want to annoy people. On the face of it it sounds pretty daft, but if you think logically…

…it still sounds pretty stupid. Reeves’ reasoning is as follows:

If you’re a consumer â€” and we introduced the PS3 in March for Â£425 or 599 Euros â€“ let’s say you bought one at the end of April and have been using it, playing Resistance: Fall of Man and MotorStorm. We’ve only been on the market for three and a bit months. Our thought process was: “Wait a minute â€“ weâ€™re actually not doing too badly â€“ weâ€™re not selling as well as Wii or DS â€“ but seasonality-wise, compared to, say, PS2 at the same time we launched it in 2001, weâ€™re actually doing quite well on a regional level.

I find this argument a little hard to believe, when sales of the PS3 have risen by approximately 150% in the US after the price was dropped by $100. Sony turning down increased sales when they are lagging behind their rivals in the current round of the console wars? I never thought I’d see the day.

He goes on to claim that dropping the price this soon after the launch would have annoyed the people who’ve already forked out Â£425 for the console, aw poor them. As I see it anyone who buys a new console on the launch date, or close to it, knows that in a few months the price is going to drop and they’ll be able to get it for Â£100 less. They know this and pay the premium price to be one of the first to own the console. Sony shouldn’t feel answerable to them for the way it runs its business, they may choose to sweeten the deal a little by adding a year onto the warranty or other similar concessions, but to refuse to drop the price and turn down the possibility of increased sales just to save hurting the feelings of a few early adopters seems a bit short sighted to me.

The fact of the matter is that UK consumers are getting stiffed, just like we always do. Regardless of the varying taxes between the two countries (For a PS3 to cost the same in real terms in the US as it does in the UK there would have to be a 30% sales tax added on) and import duties which are roughly equivalent between the two. This is simply more profiteering by Sony, being spun so that it doesn’t look like it.
(From Ars Technica.

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