UK PlayStation 3 comes in at �425, Sony loses its marbles

134 Comments by Conrad Quilty-Harper May 18th 2006 12:00PM
Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Business

Sony has officially announced the U.K. price of the Playstation 3 as £425, representing the fully featured PS3 which comes in at $599 in the U.S. and 599 EUR in Europe. GamesIndustry.biz suggests that Sony won't be selling the cut down model over the pond, although this isn't confirmed. The PS3's price in England is higher than the console's price in the United States and Europe but we're not entirely surprised by this: British consumers are used to paying more for their consoles (although traditionally the U.K. gets identical or lower prices compared to Europe). Here's a breakdown of the U.K. premium over U.S. and EU prices:

£109 more than the U.S. "Premium" PS3: the U.S. price is $599 which converts to £316. Take this away from £425 and you're left with a £109 premium.
£20 more than the EU "Premium" PS3: the EU price is 599 EUR which converts to £405. Take this away from £425 and you're left with a £20 premium

Now check out the price when compared to the Xbox 360:

£146 more than Xbox 360 Premium: the Xbox 360 Premium is £279. Take away this figure from the PS3's £425 price and you're left with a £146 premium.
£206 more than Xbox 360 Core: the Xbox 360 Core is £219. Take away this figure from the PS3's £425 price and you're left with a £206 premium.

If we were in Sony's shoes, we'd feel very uncomfortable right about now: the combination of a chunky U.S./U.K. price divide combined with the absence of a cut-down PS3 bundle doesn't stack up well against the PS3's main competitor: the Xbox 360. But wait! When we stepped into those Sony branded shoes we forgot to take the free prescription of Prozac hidden in the heel! Ahhh, much better. Now we'd say something similar to the Sony marketing rep tasked with announcing the news:

"I don't think it's an expensive machine; I think actually, it's probably a cheap machine ... If you think a Blu-Ray player by itself might be GBP 600-700, and we're coming in at just GBP 425 - it's a bargain."

Sony's "but it plays Blu-Ray" line works if you're addressing early adopters and hardcore users. However, the British public (the majority of which associate "PlayStation" with games console, and not much more) won't take kindly to hearing "bargain" and "cheap" in the same sentence as "four hundred and twenty five pounds".

[Thanks, Elmer]

Tags: £425, bargain, cheap, Playstation 3, Playstation3, PS3, PS3 UK Price, Ps3UkPrice, Sony, Xbox 360, Xbox360

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(Page 1) Reader Comments

Chris Lawrance: May 18th 2006; 12:08PM

so how much more is this in US dollars?

sepll cehck: May 18th 2006; 12:08PM

If the PS3 is region free - non of this will really matter. Brits will just have one imported. Not unlike GRAW for the Xbox 360

RP: May 18th 2006; 12:10PM

If you forget everything about traditionally inflated prices in the UK and everything else, i love the sheer irony that leaves the UK (a country with considerably less HDTVs and no HDTV content until this summer - and even then, very little HDTV content) paying so much more than the US (a country with many more HDTVs and much more HDTV content).

Like we need blu-ray...

sepll cehck: May 18th 2006; 12:10PM

�1=$1.88

current conversion rate

David: May 18th 2006; 12:11PM

It may be region free, but last time I checked british tv's were still running at 50Hz instead of 60Hz so I don't know how region free that is.

RB: May 18th 2006; 12:13PM

2.

While some Britons may import the PS3, they'll still spend significantly more since they'll get hit with 17.5% VAT and shipping costs. Britons are definately getting screwed on this one.

Edmund: May 18th 2006; 12:14PM

Jeez, Sony really are losing their marbles. I've always liked Playstation a lot and hated Xbox and been mostly a Nintendo fan. So I'm edfinitely getting a Wii but if I get a second system I'm finding myself gravitating more towards the 360 at the moment. But that could change. Keep in mind how much you'll pay for Xbox Live each year. Is Sony's online service (does it even exist?) still supposedly going to be free? If I'd have to pay for that too then that's even less reason to get a PS3.

Tom: May 18th 2006; 12:14PM

$204.92 more than in the States.. Dang!

Derbeste: May 18th 2006; 12:16PM

@RB

And we're not?

Actually...come to think of it, the only ones getting screwed in the end......is Sony.

LordAlu: May 18th 2006; 12:18PM

As a worker at GAME here in the UK, I must say i'm not suprised at the price for the PS3; Gamestation have been guessing it at that price for the past week, although they claim there are no plans for a release of the 20GB version, despite Sony having not made an announcement on that particular situation.

However, stating that they believe that to be a bargain might be going a bit to far. People come in every day to register their details for a PS3 but we only take maybe one or two names. The reason? When we explain to them that it's �425 for the machine they expect it to be massively more powerful than the 360, only to be disappointed to find it is mainly because of its blu-ray drive... a technology that practically no-one has heard of in this country.

If Sony are indeed going to sell their new console at �425, they need to do their best to inform customers about the new technology and whether it benefits them. The average buyer of a Playstation is your standard parent, buying the machine for their kids, and I can guarantee you they won't pay �425+ (don't forget games!) for a PS3 unless they are absolutely convinced it is miles better than anything else available.

If Sony can manage this then I can't see the PS3 doing anything less than exceptional, but right now they still need to do some work to convince the average consumer that the PS3 is the one to buy.

Chris: May 18th 2006; 12:18PM

Im british and at comment #5 , british people have 60hz tv's a lot of people have 100hz tellies... we aren't in the dark ages.. most of the time.
Every thing is more expensive in britain, just look at ipods.... the 60G is �300 which is 566.677 USD its awful.. i'm just glad im not buying a ps3 Wii for mii! see what i did there

Hemi: May 18th 2006; 12:18PM

That's $802.79

Ben Roe: May 18th 2006; 12:20PM

Don't forget that all the UK prices include Value Added Tax at 17.5% (yes, that is an insane sales tax), so the US/UK price difference isn't quite as big as it looks. Still, that is an insane price to launch at: given a choice between a 360 and 3 games and a PS3, I know which one I would choose.

#5 - I think a lot of modern PAL TVs support NTSC as well, I know mine does, as well as 60Hz PAL.

Cosmo: May 18th 2006; 12:20PM

For all of you in UK, I suggest you lean towards Wii. Sony screwed up this time around, and alot of us won't be even touching PS3 with a stick until it drops a couple hundred off the price (whether it's pounds, euros, or dollars). Plus Wii is definately starting a revolution.

Denbowski: May 18th 2006; 12:21PM

Worst of all, we don't even know if Blu-Ray is going to be around in five years.

fanboy: May 18th 2006; 12:22PM

OMG sony iz teh lose.

they r dead.

wii 4 lyfe.

Ianc02: May 18th 2006; 12:22PM

Thanks sony for overcharging in the Uk. Can't really fault you though Sony as every other company overcharges here in the UK anyway. Why? The reason is most people here in the UK are sheep and are pre-programmed to purchase, whatever, at a particular price. Same goes for cars, houses holidays etc etc etc, even our food is expensive. �425 x $1.88 is $799 ouch. $200 effin dollars more than you lucky US residents. OUch. Btw Sony, HDTV take up in this(uk) country is a lot lower than the US ok. Take note.

If i ever get one i will import from the US(again lol) as 99% of all tvs sold over the past 5 years in this country have no problem displaying 50 or 60hz.

I guess we(in the UK) are about 3-4 years behind the US in tech take-up. Christ we dont even have PTT here yet.

Tukka: May 18th 2006; 12:23PM

Just to be clear, for us Yanks, that means the "premium" version PS3 will cost roughly $803 in US currency, right?

Wow. Can someone explain to me why the US gets these products at a relatively discounted price? Is the average UK family's discretionary/entertainment spending budget that much higher than the US family's? I would suspect the opposite.

Are the expected sales, and differences in the manufacturing of the different versions significant enough to put a kink in their economies of scale?

Is it associated with some weird "strength of the dollar" economic mumbo jumbo?

I don't get it. Why can't/don't the console manufactures do something to correct for whatever creates these price disparities? Surely the price premiums that Europreans and Aussies are expected to pay greatly hinder sales.

idioteraser: May 18th 2006; 12:24PM

Man a vacation to Germany for a Briton is cheaper then a PS3. Hell a trip to resort for a week is going to be cheaper then a PS3 the HDTV HDMI tv and three to four games.

RP: May 18th 2006; 12:24PM

"Is Sony's online service (does it even exist?) still supposedly going to be free?"

I /think/ there's just more that you can do for free, but you'll still be paying for playing online.

Caleb: May 18th 2006; 12:25PM

#7 "Hello Edmund" this is not an attact towards you, but in regards to your "keep in mind how much you'll pay for xbox live each year" comment, you can toss that. If you want it (Gold) get it, it will run you right at $50.00, if you don't care to have gold you get the wonderful bucket O' silver for free. Sony has said "claimed" that SOME of their online services will be free. But their online gaming won't mark my words ont this, it can't be done...well it can't be done free if its going to be decient. What Sony is trying to get many to "believe" is that Sony's not outright charging us for this, which on paper might be true. Sony is leaving it up to their 3rd party developers to run their servers and then you get charged what they want to charge you, most likely a diffrent log in with each game and unstability. You will pay in the end, one way or another, trust me.

See ya on live after November 06' ;)

Without anger in anyway.

-Caleb

idiot: May 18th 2006; 12:25PM

I think this is still too cheap. Come on Sony, stop doing us favors and raise the price some more.

Caleb: May 18th 2006; 12:26PM

DANG IT Sorry for the typo

*Attack*

-Still calm

Caleb

DBX00: May 18th 2006; 12:27PM

I think that the logic behind the math is deceptive. If the 425 pounds include the 17.5% VAT, then you're looking at a comparable price of 360 pounds (the 425 minus 17.5% VAT) to $599. That translates into $677 ($1.88 exchange rate), which is $77 premium to the US price without tax. The $77 premium will flucuate with the changes in the exchange rate which could be significant between now and launch (as well as the period after launch). I think that if anything is outrageous is the 17.5% VAT, but that has nothing to do with Sony.

Vince: May 18th 2006; 12:28PM

Brits don't care amount money anymore.
The young are hopelessly priced out of the housing market by the housing bubble so they rent cheap and spend large.
The homeowners MEW the "free money" that the bubble has given them and throw that away on keeping up with the Joneses, and the rest happily live beyond their means on credit cards which are handed out like sweeties at a kids party. Which just leaves the frugle miniority and pensioners.
Sky are selling �299 pound (+subscription) boxes for their new HD service like hot cakes and the sale of HD TV has gone through the roof in the run up to the World Cup
The price of the PS3 in the UK won't cause quite the storm like it has in the US, we just don't care anymore.

Graal: May 18th 2006; 12:30PM

Difficult to know what to say to this. It is a lot though looking at it from a local point of view �425 is easyier to swallow than $600 must be for the yanks. But even as a fan of the Psone and PS2 this is going to be a slim year for games if I do buy it. I hope that the acceleration/improvement of PS1 and PS2 games actually means something as that is what I will be playing on it until after X mas >_

soco: May 18th 2006; 12:31PM

all pal tvs don't support PAL60, but pretty much any TV made in the last 5 years or so, unless it was incredibly cheap will support PAL60. and as already mentioned a lot of TVs in the last few years have supported double-scan (100hz).

people attempting to import this from the US will likely get hit with a fairly high import fee. may not be worth it to import in the end.

J B Cougar: May 18th 2006; 12:31PM

Something tells me that Oliver won't be asking for seconds as far as the PS3 is concerned.

Michael: May 18th 2006; 12:33PM

What's interesting is if you take the PS3 core and XBox 360 premium, in Canada, the price difference is $50.

$499 - XBox 360
$549 - Playstation 3

But then again Canada only has a 30 million population so we're not that big of a deal :(

Paul P.: May 18th 2006; 12:34PM

The prices are higher there for good reason. First, you have the EU, which recently passed a law banning certain amounts of certain metals from being in any electronics. So to comply with this companies either have to make a new version at some expense or convert their whole line to this, at great expense. It is fair that Europe should pay the brunt of that expense since they forced the standard. Next you have tariffs. Every country has them, and it causes the prices to go up. Then you have your value added tax. The tax is included in the price of a good in Europe, not added at the time of purchase, so when you hear 425 pounds, that is after tax, not before it. Finally you have to ship everything over there by air or by boat, which isn't exactly cheap, especially with rising oil prices. Europe is the farthest shipping point.

The reasons for higher prices are multi-faceted.

juicy X: May 18th 2006; 12:34PM

hmmm......i dunno caleb.......your almost....

too calm *shifty eyes*

Daniel D: May 18th 2006; 12:34PM

"Vince" - You are wrong, the reason the PS2 was more succesful because it was cheap and cherful and customers were not forced to pay for things they didnt use (xbox harddrive" I assure you that as a result of this the main stream public (previous ps2 owners) will buy a 360 over its more expensive competitor.

Microsoft learned from their last lesson that you should not force more expensive features on the customer and give them the price tag to match that is why its allowing customers to upgrade as they see it, sony didnt learn from Microsofts lesson.

Ryan: May 18th 2006; 12:35PM

All Sony needs to do now is tack on a VR helmet that only projects images in shades of red and we have a winner!

Chiablo: May 18th 2006; 12:35PM

Play Station3 = Disc Read Error 3

pom: May 18th 2006; 12:36PM

"GBP 425 is definitely not a mass-market price, no," Maguire conceded. "But you think about the price, think about the price of just a Blu-Ray player. It will be cheaper than a Blu-Ray player just by itself. So fundamentally we're going to be great value just from that point of view without even looking at the games side."

However, Maguire acknowledged that Sony faces an uphill struggle in communicating this message to consumers with little or no knowledge of next-generation disc formats."

Its not like they are completely calling it a bargain. Just curious though, when did Joystiq transform from a gaming news blog into a post as many anti-sony articles an hour as possible website?

ac: May 18th 2006; 12:36PM

After todays news about Xbox Live dishing out 600 Terabytes of data in 7 days... someone has to foot the bill for such a massive infrastructure. I liked the old playstations, but forcing the customer to take on Blueray in order to play their next-gen console is screwing the customer... forcing the publishers to build their infrastructure is screwing them and customers.

Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe people want to spend a couple bucks a month per title per month to play. So, if you have 5 games you want to play online and each charges $5/mo... well you get the picture. $50/yr doesn't look so bad.

As soon as the price for PS3 broke... I immediately said to my buddy and said, 'What about our friends across the pong!?!?!?'

Anyways....

Adam: May 18th 2006; 12:36PM

2 words: fuck sake

spike: May 18th 2006; 12:36PM

Seriously. I get pissed when my girlfriend goes out and buys $300.00 pairs of shoes, if go out and I buy a PS3 I lose most of my hard earned leverage. I love Sony and own a 360 (which I think is amazing and which she bought for me!) but leverage over your girlfriend is something that can be hard to come buy.

I need hand in my relationship (Seinfeld).

Ianc02: May 18th 2006; 12:38PM

Good job our healthcare is free seeing as �425 will put most average consumers into a state of shock.

@Tukka.

We in the Uk get shafted all the time. I mean the 17.5% sales tax,cheers, we pay the eqivalent of near $8.50 for a gallon of fuel, the average house price in the UK for a small and i mean small(mine is a two bedroom house around 450sq. foot) house is the equivalent of approx $300k. Shafted. So its no surprise Sony says �425 for us here.

DBX00: May 18th 2006; 12:39PM

I'm starting to realize how STUPID consumers really are. You can't just accept everything that someone writes as complete fact. Do some type of analysis on your own. READ MY POST (#25) and it'll clear up all this before it turns into another Sony bashing fest.

epobirs: May 18th 2006; 12:39PM

#17

You're ahead of the US in other areas. Text messaging caught on huge in your market before most carriers even rolled it out here. A lot of the hardware that gave us an early lead in cell phone coverage became a liability as it went obsolete and couldn't support a lot of new features but carriers were reluctant to shell out the cash for installing the newer hardware.

And we're still in the first season of the revived Dr. Who!

funkonaut: May 18th 2006; 12:40PM

Stop complaining about high taxes! Europe votes liberal, so they get what they ask for. Sheesh.

If you want lower taxes, ditch socialism. Otherwise, STFU already! This is getting really really old reading post after post about how "Europeans are getting screwed" when they alone are the ones responsible for these pricing situations.

XboxGamer: May 18th 2006; 12:45PM

Get an Xbox 360. Gamers this decision is not that hard. PS3 way overpriced with little games at launch. Xbox 360 will have over 100 games available by the time the PS3 launches. Nintendo is going kiddie again with the Wii. No blood again in a game called Red Steel is an example of this.

Xbox 360 has epic games as well as simple fun games on Xbox live that you can download.

The decision is simple. Get a 360 and let the others do what they want. Gimmicky Nintendo. Overpriced Sony.

32_Footsteps: May 18th 2006; 12:45PM

For those that point out that the British price includes that massive 17.5% tax... we're still talking about the Brits getting hit with an $80 premium for the system (factoring out the tax, that's around $683US). And on average, Americans are going to be paying an extra $36 for the same system. Just for comparison's sake.

SiN ViCiOuS: May 18th 2006; 12:46PM

Edmund,

Where have you been in the last 4 days? Sonys online service is not free..meaning the basic service is free like xbox live silver. No announcment has been made about online multiplayer service.

Tim: May 18th 2006; 12:47PM

funkonaut is right, if you think it's a good idea to give everyone free health care, government-subsidized housing, etc., realize that the price for that is income taxes at %40 and higher and sales tax at 17.5%. I think I'd pass on that, I'd rather take care of myself than have the government tell me I have to take care of everyone else.

jabbertrack: May 18th 2006; 12:50PM

That's really odd. It's clearly not to cover shipping costs because as everyone knows America is the most expensive place to distribute product thanks to it's crazy size and trucker drug habbits.

Mr. Paul: May 18th 2006; 12:51PM

if the blue ray drive is one of the PS3 big selling points, then what will happen if/when the Xbox 360 lets people download HD movies from Xbox Live?

also if PS3 and Xbox are abled to download HD movies, in the future, then does anyone really need a blue ray drive?

CUBS-BEARS-BULLS-RULE: May 18th 2006; 12:51PM

don't reply ps3 sucks Wii and 360 will sell more

Ben Roe: May 18th 2006; 12:51PM

#45 - that sounds about average, most things are 10-20% more expensive in the UK. Hence the fact that I picked up a couple of iPods last time I was in the States.

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