A few years back I wanted a DVD player for my TV. When I went to the store, I didn’t go to the video game aisle. I went to the DVD player aisle. Something like 6 months later I wanted a PS2. I didn’t go to the DVD aisle. I went to the video game aisle. Belatedly, I found out the PS2 could play DVDs, so I sorted of wasted my money on that $100 DVD player. While I now know better, is Grandma buying Christmas presents going to know? Of course not. And this is the flaw behind the $500/$600 PS3 sales strategy. Grandma’s going to buy a Wii for her grandkids, because it’s 1/3rd the price and it also plays games. And she’s going to buy a DVD player for her son, or some more affordable alternative such as the HD-DVD, because they all play movies. Even if you’re technically knowledgable you’re still going to balk at the price because, again, there are cheaper alternatives that do the same thing. For 1/2 the price I could get an XBOX 360 rather than a PS3. Most developers develop for both platforms and they usually use the lowest common denominator for both machines. So even if you have a Blu-Ray drive that holds Gigs of extra data, it just means you have a big empty disk.
In this article this article Ray Maguire defends the price because it’s allegedly cheaper than buying both together:
“I don’t think it’s an expensive machine; I think actually, it’s probably a cheap machine,” he commented. “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.”
This is the begging the question fallacy. If you are Ray Maguire then you work for Sony and as such you won’t even consider buying a HD-DVD or an XBOX 360. So yeah, “it’s a bargain”. However, if you’re not Ray Maguire and you don’t work for Sony (or aren’t that loyal) you’re going to look at alternatives, in which case it’s not so cheap anymore.
In my opinion, Sony should sell the PS3 and they should sell a Blu-Ray drive. Each can sink or swim on its own merits. I think sticking to their guns will just cause both to fail.