Tecmo Koei CEO to Sony: "please cut the price" of the PS3
By Donald Melanson 
posted July 4th 2009 12:29PM
posted July 4th 2009 12:29PM
Activision's CEO has already gone public with his complaints about the price of the PS3, and it looks he's not alone among industry bigwigs with a bone to pick with Sony, with the CEO of the newly formed Tecmo Koei now coming out and echoing his concerns. Speaking with CVG, Tecmo Koei's Kenji Matsubara says that whenever he speaks about the issue with Sony reps, he asks them to "please cut the price" of the PS3, adding that "from a publisher's point of view we would welcome a price cut for PS3 and we are waiting, definitely." He doesn't quite go so far as pull an Activision and threaten to ditch support for the console if Sony doesn't drop the price, however, although it seems safe to assume that these complains will only grow louder -- at least until Sony actually does cut the price of the PS3, that is.
[Via gamesindustry.biz]
[Via gamesindustry.biz]
It's all about user base. Developers prefer consoles that have a lot of userbase (thus everybody is flocking on the Wii). Sony needs to bring back PS2 backward compatibility so they can keep the large PS2 userbase from moving to the 360. Price cut is also important. Knowing that blu-ray drives can be found for cheap nowadays, it's seems like Sony is focused on bleeding less money to keep the shareholders happy in the short term instead of looking at the future of the PS3.
The problem isn't the price of the PS3, I think it's actually reasonably priced and I'm a student with thousands of $ in debt. It's the videogames themselves that are way too expensive. Someone needs to write an article to address THAT issue, Sony's pricing is fine.
Add the wireless adapter @ $100... and I am a xbox fanboy! The WiFi for xbox360 pisses me off everything I think about it.
This is what I think. PS3 will have a price cut very very soon. The original bulk PS3 will be around $200-300, while the new Slimmer version will hold the current prices. This way, they will have something to offset the price-cuts. It seems true, since the loyalty fans will buy the newer systems just because it is from SONY.
I would say to Tecmo-Koei and Activision to make some exclusive PlayStation 3 games and we will drop the PS3 price down to $249.99 and $349.99 but first we(Sony have to cut out some of the PS3 stuff like the CPU, Graphics, and Sound stuff and there is your price drop.
We here at Sony can not ever afford to drop the PS3 price because we are losing money on every PS3 we produce, but the PS2 is $99.00!
That type of thinking is keeping the PS3 in third place.
There is no reason to keep manufacturing the PS2- which makes it yet another competitor of the PS3. If you dropped the PS2 and made the PS3 completely backwards compatable, you would definately increase sales. People would WANT to buy the PS3 to maintain their library of PS2 games, and in turn purchase PS3 games. As it stands, Sony has alienated a large group of supporters keeping many disinterested in their later console.
I see everyone complaining about PS3's price but no one complaining about the idiotic €250 price tag on the Wii. Does anyone honestly think te Wii is worth €250? More than an Xbox 360 arcade?
Please...
I see so many people in this thread who mindlessly bought into Blu-Ray and the rest of the Sony marketing that it's not even funny. Fact is, most games look pretty damn similar if not the same between the PS3 and the 360 while offering usually the same content. From a game developer's perspective, Blu-Ray is a classic example of "if you build it, they will come" meaning, if you code for the PS3 your code and graphics end up being unoptimized - why should you optimize if you have all that room? It doesn't mean you can't get similar if not the same results on the 360 and DVD format. Don't forget, you can watch movies, play music, TV shows, all that jazz on the 360 too.
Fact is, Sony made a bad decision to bundle in their proprietary Blu-Ray standard that the general market has rejected. Even before we got caught up in this recession, Blu-Ray was too expensive compared to DVD's at retail and people were starting to look to digital downloads as the future. And now that we're in a recession, the PS3 just plain costs too much. Sure, the vast majority of people in the country still have a job, and there's a good number of people who still make a good salary whose jobs are not in danger and they don't own a PS3 - but the fact is, we're in a recession MENTALITY, which means that even the people who have money aren't spending it. Sony needs to suck it up, admit they did wrong by including Blu-Ray, and cut the PS3's price down to $250 if not $150-$200 to be more competitive with the 360 arcade, because people compare the cheapest price possible these days, not features.
If they can't handle that kind of price cut, Sony as a mega-corp deserves to fail. Their products, from entertainment to electronics and computers, have suffered a very strong decrease in quality and customer appreciation in the last few years. They need to either get their act together or fail.
I don't care as much about the price as I do about backwards compatability!!
If they brought THAT back, I'ld buy a PS3.
I am a proud owner of a PS3, and to approach this in a neutral manner
PS3 loses money on each unit that is sold as is...
from a development standpoint, they have already dropped the cost of the dev kit by 8,000
therefore the publishers are able to create games at a lower cost, but the man-hours may increase due to the newer/ different technology
the true reason they are asking for the drop is cause their games are system sellers...... MGS4 was a system seller and you have not heard kojima or konami say anything about cuts. Ultimately, if sony were to drop the price it would need to cut their production cost to match at least to make something of a profit for each console sold. publishers have received cost reductions, with more ps3s in household its a greater chance that their craptastic ports will be purchased, increasing their revenue.
Sony will do what it needs to do to maintain themselves. Companies are being greedy..... see how they would like it if every game sold lost them money.... and then ask them to reduce the cost. As previously stated, I'm content with the demos, a couple i wanted to get, but $60 for a repetitive, poor representation of a game... i'll pass.
GT5, God of War III & Heavy Rain will sell systems.... maybe not the amount of MGS4 but it will make its mark.... why not drop the price after the worthwhile games have been released.... makes more sense that way. Sony may be able to recoup some of their losses.
It's not about the DevKit costs, it's about the royalties, Activision said their royalties to Sony last year was $500 million, which was a higher rate and lower return than that on Wii and X360. It's not the initial cost that is hurting them, where more sales translates into more pure profit, it's that Sony's cut is so high that those large sale numbers don't result in significantly more share of the pie for the title producers that are moving both software and bringing people to the platform (or keeping them there as is the case w/ Rock Band & COD) for their titles.
Right now Sony needs the developers more than they need Sony [PC, X360 and Wii are all successful, and DS is killing PSP].
If they learned anything from their battle with Toshiba on HD-DVD, Content is King, and without happy devs you have no content.
Either do what they say or they will blow up your HQ SONY!
wooh! rot in hell SONY!!!
sony: "keep making games and stfu"
You can buy an xbox let it get the RROD and then buy another one and switch serials. How is it against the law? they sold you a defective product and should honor what they sell. When you pay a lot of money for something and it breaks the consumer should not have to suffer.
Personally I would take it back and switch them, I would do it over and over until I got one that works
This is 2009, and the PS3 is 2006 technology. The price should theoretically drop $100 every year. In 2010 it should have finally hit the $199 price point.
This is the company that said the Wii was too expensive. Don't expect Sony to listen to reason.