Sony: No price cuts this holiday season

We're in the midst of the next Great Depression and the prompt reads, "is price still an issue?"

I know electronics sales are still strong, but come on...

The worldwide financial/economic crash is still in progress and still has a long way to go before it hits bottom. By the time the 'biggest' shopping day of the year rolls around, the day after thanksgiving, millions of parents around the world will simply be looking for the CHEAPEST console on the shelves that they recognize as one of the 'big three'. Money is going to be very VERY tight and spending an additional $50 not done lightly.

The X-Box 360 arcade, being the cheapest console on the shelves, will outsell all other sku's. If Microsoft can supply them.

Seriously, I think it's time for a price cut at this point.

I'd never spend 400 bucks on a gaming console. Maybe I'll get a PS3 in 2012 when it's < $200 and has great games at < $30.

Let's face it. the best choice for gaming, with the economy as it is now, is the PS2 followed closely by the DS. IMO the PS2 and DS have some the best games out there for the best prices. Oh, and they are both the cheapest choice.

I am not suprised by this article. Its too costly for Sony to drop the price. There have been countless articles/press releases about Sony themselves admitting that the PS3 isnt selling like they "projected" or "expected". And there are only 2 big reasons why it isnt...

Reason #1(and the most obvious):
....regardless of what point of view you are looking at it, the slow BluRay adoption rate is causing them to suffer. BluRay has been out for near 3 years, and it still hasnt come that far since its almost meaningless victory againt arch rival HD-DVD. At the 3 year mark in DVD's triumph over VHS, the DVD players/movies where A LOT cheaper & after the market was saturated, the DVD player prices didnt just drop, they plummeted. And thats right around the time the PS2's spec sheet showed up, with DVD playback capability. The jump from VHS->DVD was A LOT bigger than the hop from DVD->BluRay/HD-DVD. Set top box Bluray manufacturers are releasing cheaper BluRay players(cheaper than the PS3), with a faster BluRay ROM drive, 4x at this time. Why buy a system that has a HDD to make up for the apparent lack of speed of the BR-ROM drive, but HDD arent cheap either. Peter Moore recently admitted to that fact with the original Xbox, as a reason why MS abandoned the original Xbox. So what does Sony do ? Lower the price and loose money ? Or do they simply make a new Sku with a 4x BluRay drive sans a HDD, or do they just say , "Shut up and buy it"

Reason #2:
...Backwards compatibility. A simple fact that turned the tide in Sony'd favorwith the competiton with the Sega DreamCast was the fact that the PS2 worked almost flawlessly with its Uber-successful predecessors'(The PSOne or Original PSX) huge software library. When Sony released the first batch of PS3's they had every bit of the Ps2's Backwards compatibility with the PS1 titles on top of compatibility with the PS2's huge library of titles as well. But then they figured that the systems where costing too much to manufacture, so they started to shuffle things around with the hardware. Unlike the Xbox360, you can just buy a few things and make the cheaper model function like the "Elite" model...it was much more difficult. So backwards compatibility, a thing that allowed Sony to stretch the life of both the PS1 & PS2, has been pretty much eliminated a this point. The only solution to that problem would be a software solution, but to me thats a more "dangerous" approach, especially when you arent MS aka, the Kings of patches & upgrades.

Reason #3:
...and to a lesser extent..games. LBP is the best thing that any PS3 fan can see on the horizon. God of War 3 is still a little ways back if you ask me. But if that game is going to be as big as I think it is, you Ps3 owners/fanboys had better get a HDD dedicated to Metal Gear 4 & God of War 3 each. I feel that that title may be the biggest yet. Maybe the God of war creator may manage to fill up 2 50 GB BluRay discs.

"For those of you who haven't taken the plunge: Is price still the issue?"

Considering that I don't give a rat's ass about High-Def, I'd have to say: Yes.

Personally, price is not an issue. What is an issue is that for the price they are charging I am getting less than what was initially offered. I don't care about 160GB HD because I am not online that often and I have a computer with 4TB of space. If I want to download high definition video I have bittorrent and newsgroups for that.

Take a look at the comparison chart here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3

In 2 years the price has dropped $100 on both models and they have cut backwards compatibility, two usb ports, flash card reader, SACD, and the Chrome trim. I could care less about SACD and Chrome trim but at this rate in two years you will basically be buying a PS2 with a better graphics card. If I am going to drop $500 on a console i want backwards compatibility. Full compatibility not some software emulation that will not allow me to enjoy some of my favorite PS2 games. Even Microsoft realized this and went with the costly emulation process which was the equivalent of doing the reverse of what Apple did.

If they release a 160GB, Hardware PS2 compatibility, 4 USB ports and a flash card reader I do not have a problem spending $600 or $700 because I would still get the Blu Ray drive. By the time I wanted to buy one at launch they went software emulation and since then I have given up. Maybe with PS4 Sony will get it right but until then Microsoft has an exclusivity agreement with my wallet.

Personally I think all console sales will be down this holiday season with the economic crisis. A $200 360 (which u have to get a harddrive for eventually, and hope you evade those nasty red lights), a $250 Wii (needs more games but will prob. win the hardware sales), and a $400 PS3 (showing potential with new great looking games but still waiting on its killer app) will all look a lil' suspect when u had to put $50 in your gas tank just to get to the store. Before I leave i pose a question to you. Of Microsoft's 10mil units sold in America how many are re-buys from the ring of death? (before they started fixing them for free of course) you know the 2million gamers that bought the system 2 or 3 times

I have to say that for me it is price. I want to play LBP but it just isn't viable right now because of all of the 360 titles that I want to purchase. For me at least, price is definitely still the issue.

Sony better start praying because the way they handle things will be their downfall. Microsoft and Nintendo will totally destroy Sony if things are still going to be an issue and if they don't get their act together.