Sony says $499 60GB PS3 is staying alive (alive!) in US

After some turbulent hours of confusion over this story, Sony finally got its facts straight and let the world know that it is in fact not going to discontinue its 60GB PS3 in US once current stock runs out. According to SCEA's Dave Karraker, "As announced this week, SCEA's product offering in North America consists of a 80GB PS3 available in August at $599 and a 60GB PS3 available now for $499. We have will have ample supplies of both models to meet the needs of our consumers for the foreseeable future." Apparently the confusion arose from Sony Europe's David Reeves explaining that if they cut the 60GB price in Europe, they'd run out of stock in Europe by the end of July. So, false alarm people, please resume buying / not buying your $499 60GB PS3s in an orderly manner.

Update: This has been semi-contradicted once again, with Sony now saying that they have enough stock to sell 60GB consoles for the next few months, but it doesn't sound like they'll be making any more after that. According to Karraker, "We won't be making any further announcements regarding our PS3 model hardware strategy in North America until the 60GB model is exhausted and market conditions are evaluated."

[aaron @ Jul 13th 2007 4:09PM]

the way they are phrasing it I think the 60 gig is done but they have more consoles to sell before they are out of the 60 gig versions. so it will last "for the forseeable future" as they say. That whole press release is very marketing speakish.

[Jonathan Keim @ Jul 13th 2007 4:35PM]

Can we even trust them at this point?

[Evan @ Jul 14th 2007 1:33AM]

I am just waiting for the Engadget article "60GB Playstation 3, RIP 2006-2007" At least they can just use word to find and replace the numbers 20 with 60 without having to write a new article! :-D

[Jeebus @ Jul 14th 2007 1:01PM]

Sony is not "promising" you anything. They are informing you of their current strategy, which they can change at any time they please. They have no obligation to you or anyone else other than their shareholders and that obligation is to be as profitable as possible, and doing that requires trying multiple strategies, such as different pricing points and various hardware modifications. Capiche?

[Xopenex @ Jul 14th 2007 3:32PM]

i've got one word for Sony......IDIOTS!!!!

[pigfister @ Jul 15th 2007 7:48AM]

so you can pay $499 for the 60 gig version or $599 for the 80 gig ps3.

well does anyone else see this as a pathetic attempt of a relaunch and why why the 80 gig that has had the emotion engine chip backwards compatibility chip removed cost $100 more when it is cheaper to produce than the 60 gig?

[J @ Jul 13th 2007 4:09PM]

why would anyone with half a brain spend $100 for an extra 20GB when the HD is easily upgradable?

[The Aggie CEO™ @ Jul 13th 2007 5:59PM]

Not EVERYONE are Nerds like us.......lol........and even then not everyone is willing to risk a PS3 without warranty..........

[pigfister @ Jul 15th 2007 7:50AM]

and you get less hardware: no emotion engine in the 80gig ps3:

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=7991

[Error404 @ Jul 13th 2007 4:12PM]

"We have _WILL_ have ample supplies of both models to meet the needs of our consumers for the foreseeable future."

Is that a type-o for 'still'?

[Muu @ Jul 13th 2007 4:16PM]

Sony's playing with words again.

They need to be a little more 'straight up' about this, because most people are bound to be skeptical after their whole price-drop confusion earlier in the week.

[rodsky @ Jul 13th 2007 4:57PM]

sounds like they are now trying to make it sound like their poor sales are a good thing cuz now there are plenty of the 60giggers before they are gone forever

[Big @ Jul 13th 2007 4:17PM]

BUT WHERE ARE THE F#"*IN GAMES !?????!

[AG23 @ Jul 13th 2007 4:35PM]

Enough with the where are the games already. Did you see E3(Killzone 2, Heavenly Sword, Lair, UT3, MGS4, Ratchet and Clank, Uncharted, etc...)

[Eric @ Jul 13th 2007 4:51PM]

When are those games coming out again? Any of them this year?

[Andir3.0 @ Jul 13th 2007 5:25PM]

(no, yes, yes, yes, no, yes, yes, yes/no...)

[Kyle @ Jul 13th 2007 4:18PM]

Y'all are behind on this story. It's been reconfirmed by Kaz that production has stopped on the 60GB model and once it's sold out, it's sold out. Talk to your pals at Joystiq. :)

[Sizer @ Jul 13th 2007 4:21PM]

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

What more can you say at this point?

[Error404 @ Jul 13th 2007 4:28PM]

In sony's case, that would be 'batteries on fire' :P

[Bee Hatch @ Jul 13th 2007 5:26PM]

In Microsofts csase that would be 'consoles on fire'.

[DutchGuy @ Jul 13th 2007 4:22PM]

Yeah.. we all know Sony's word is worth quite a lot, don't we?

[Quikster @ Jul 13th 2007 4:22PM]

What about the quote from SCE CEO and President Kaz Hirai
"From a hardware perspective, the $499 price adjustment we did for the 60GB version for the American market, we're no longer in production for that product," he said in an on-camera interview. "Once that product is gone from the retailer shelves, then we're back to a $599 SKU only, so it's not like we have a two-price strategy in the US market. We found out very early on how consumers react to having just one SKU as opposed to two."
-http://www.gamespot.com/news/rumorcontrol.html?tag=subnav;rumors

[Jeff @ Jul 13th 2007 4:47PM]

Ugh! This is a huge clusterf*ck.

What Hirai *didn't* say in that interview is that the "$599 sku" would *stay $599* once stock of the 60GB model runs out. You guys are really quick to read things into phrases like "the forseeable future" but apparently everybody missed this.

The bottom line is that it seems obvious to me that Sony was trying to clear the 60GB model out at $499, then they would drop the 80GB model to $499 to take its place. The "single price point" is $499, not $599.

Obviously, they can't sell any 80GB units at $599 if they just *tell* people they're going to drop the price. So Kaz didn't. And now they're probably scrambling to figure out what their message should be, and nothing they're saying is sounding very convincing. What can they say? They can't admit to their plan; nobody's going to buy *either* system in that case, as they wait for the 60GB models to be gone and the 80GB price to drop. They also can't backpedal now and say the 60GB model is staying around forever, because Kaz already said it's out of production.

They have two options: just deal with the bad PR and hope it blows over (and it will), or do something drastic like cop to the whole thing and lower the price of the 80GB model *now*. I doubt the latter will happen but am secretly hoping for it, because they'd have to lower the 60GB model again too (though probably not a full $100), in which case I'd finally buy one. But I think they'll probably just shut up at this point instead.

David Reeves and Kaz Hirai need to be muzzled. Together they just completely blew up what would have otherwise been a perfectly good plan for the rest of the year.

[alexhrose71 @ Jul 13th 2007 4:23PM]

Ho hum...what a lot of dicking about. $399 and decent games please ... kthxbye

[david ray @ Jul 13th 2007 4:31PM]

Can anyone explain why we are getting these small incremental increases in hard drives when harddrives are ridiculously cheap now. 120 gig?, (not just Sony - Microsoft is worse ) when you can get 500 gig for on the cheap.

[Eric @ Jul 13th 2007 4:54PM]

You can get 2.5" SATA 500GB for cheap now? Where would that be?

[jakep_82 @ Jul 13th 2007 4:55PM]

PS3's use 2.5" laptop hard drives. The largest drive I've seen that will fit is 250GB. And the price per GB on laptop drives is substantially more than 3.5" desktop drives. That said, $100 more for an extra 20GB and a game is ridiculous, especially when you consider that they removed the emotion engine.

[Andir3.0 @ Jul 13th 2007 5:28PM]

Newegg has 2.5" 250G drives for $190(?) and 2.5" 120G drives for $70.

[Matt @ Jul 16th 2007 10:31PM]

Newegg saves the day again!

[MFB9 @ Jul 13th 2007 4:33PM]

Of course they have ample supply, they only sell 80k a month. If they have a million 60GB left, and they double sales, they're still covered until 08.

Either way, they are deceiving their consumers and losing whatever goodwill they just earned with the pricedrop.

[Blair McGregor @ Jul 13th 2007 4:39PM]

http://uk.gamespot.com/news/6175011.html

Kaz Harai Contradicts this, Says 60GB model no longer in production.

[orochi @ Jul 13th 2007 4:51PM]

Joystiq also got additional confirmations from David Karraker that the 60 gig model is discontinued.

[Rob @ Jul 13th 2007 5:06PM]

Unlike Apple, that likes to keep their information as secret as possible in order to build up the marketing hype, Sony has the taken the "Misinformation" route. I own products by both. Sony should just announce what they have to announce, and then let people speculate whatever they want. Instead of saying "no we're not doing this, or that." Just say "we can't comment about that at the moment." Leave people with a little bit of curiosity rather than tell them lies. What are we, 5 years old?

[nVidiot @ Jul 13th 2007 5:09PM]

All they are saying is that even at $100 cheaper they won't sell out of them by the end of July.

I bought one though. Wanted Blu-ray for a while now.

[daschupa @ Jul 13th 2007 5:37PM]

Dang, we need to pitch in and send all the Sony execs The Guide to Communication. They act like the three stooges.

[Phil @ Jul 13th 2007 6:02PM]

Now if they can teach it to sing "Puttin' on the Ritz" I might just buy one.

[Tom @ Jul 13th 2007 6:13PM]

these guys are such jokers. it's as if there are a bunch of monkeys running that company (or at least its PR department)

[loci @ Jul 13th 2007 6:21PM]

"We have will have ample supplies"

ahhh bless him, he thinks there could be a demand :)

[AL @ Jul 13th 2007 7:37PM]

Did Sony hire the former Iraqi Information Minister???

[Cal @ Jul 13th 2007 7:33PM]

How about some of you guys in a position to talk to these guys give them some shit about this. Why should we believe anything they say either way? These are the same guys who wouldn't confirm that the 20gig sku wasn't being made anymore until months after anyone had seen them at retail, the same guys who denied a price drop right before confirming a price drop, now you have the SCEE guy saying the 60gig sku is dead in america, then karaker saying thats not true, and you have kaz hirai saying it IS true. I don't believe there's any reason to doubt the SCEE guy or Kaz since it wouldn't make sense to keep making one version with the EE and one without, and even less to have two version both without the EE but at 60 gig and 80 gig increments of hard drive. Buy the 60 gig now if the Emotion Engine is important to you.

[Leo @ Jul 13th 2007 8:46PM]

They should just keep the 60GB unit at $499. If it is being discontinued Sony executives should come out and say it. People will want it because of its 100% backwards compatibility. The five free Blu-Ray discs are just icing on the cake.

The 80GB unit is only worth $499, but Sony shouldn't drop the price until the 60GB units are sold out at which time it will be closing in on Christmastime and a price drop will be warranted, anyways. Sony is probably still losing about $200-$300 on each PS3 sale, so they should continue to have one unit that "only" loses $200 (instead of the $300 the 60GB unit is probably costing them) if they have two units on the market.

[rodsky @ Jul 13th 2007 8:42PM]

new firmware disables emotion engine, which is lame
so just a 20gb upgrade isnt worth it

[Cal @ Jul 14th 2007 12:00AM]

Where did you hear that? In an interview with 1up around the time the ps3 was hitting Europe the big bald guy said that they can't turn it off.

[Mak @ Jul 14th 2007 5:38AM]

What is the big deal? IF you want a $499 60GB PS3, go down the store this weekend and buy one (as if we believe the Xbots, the shelves of full of dust covered PS3 consoles).

If you don't want one, SHUT THE FOOK UP!!

[Mr. Bigglesworth @ Jul 14th 2007 1:02PM]

Well put.

[K.R @ Jul 14th 2007 12:12PM]

Now its been rediscontinued......

http://kotaku.com/gaming/clustered-fucks/kaz-confirms-60gb-ps3-discontinuation-278414.php


This will obviously bring their sales up in the short run, ( in Canada there is only a $50 difference between the 360 premium $500 and the PS3 $550) so really if Sony had decided to keep making the 60 gig version they could really attack Microsoft on their quality issues, and really hit xbox when it hopes to sell big in the period before/after the release of Halo 3. But really it looks like Sony is just happy with making a small liquidation and then staying in 3rd place.

[Rick @ Jul 14th 2007 8:09PM]

Come on peeps. Sony wants to make as much profit as possible. The cost difference between a 60GB and an 80GB....zilch at this point. They are more than likely paying less for 80GB than they did the 60GB to begin with. Cost of adding a game and controller....nearly zilch..the game adds nothing and the controllers are made a dime a dozen in China. Manufacturing the PS3 with the emotion engine, rambus memory, extra circuits....more than a few bucks. Not only do they save money with few less parts but because there are fewer parts churn out times and failure rates are less. Add additional profits for cheaper parts (including the blu-ray laser) and sony is making a considerably greater profit selling this system at $599 than they were with the 60GB system. Plus they want to get rid of the 60GB systems now so they are selling their more profitable 80gb systems for the holiday season.

[Squishey @ Jul 14th 2007 11:46PM]

Did you just say "....a considerably greater profit...."?




Hahahahahaha :..) That's Classic.

[darter9000 @ Jul 15th 2007 1:51AM]

Since when was an extra 20 gigs of HDD space worth an extra $100 in this day and age?

[BananaBoat @ Jul 16th 2007 2:43AM]

If they end up getting rid of the 499 price point, they will regret it. I bought a PS3 when they were 599, though I guess I get the added bonus of the emotion engine =p so not all is lost. Still, not many people are willing to waste over half of a thousand dollars on a gaming console.