The Sony General Manager of Australia and New Zealand made the following comment:
"Wii is a core gaming device. It's a more fun, intuitive sort of product to pick up, where the PS3 is a broader entertainment solution; so you can have your fun, enjoyable gaming ... but then you have a whole suite of other applications ... such as Blu-ray media playback, the ability to access your music, access your photos and the interoperability with the PlayStation Portable. Gamers are extremely aware of what they're after and what they want. So gamers will already have a very good understanding of what PlayStation 3 offers versus what Wii offers and many of them will probably have both devices."
I remember having the same kind of discussion a couple of years ago when the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP came out, with Sony essentially saying "We do more than just play games -- we're your portable entertainment solution!" As far as I can tell, it seems to me the DS outsold (and continues to outsell) the PSP, and the UMD media format that was so highly touted is now largely dead outside of Japan.
I tend to think of the Wii as a casual gaming device, and a PS3 as a hardcore gamer's device. The reason is purely on the basis of the economics involved. For most people, gaming is a pretty expensive hobby -- $50 for each game, in addition to the console cost. When you think about the cost of the Playstation 3 at $600, it's a pretty expensive entertainment option. To put it into perspective, what $600 dollars can buy in entertainment:
- Nintendo Wii ($250) + 7 Games (@$50 each)
- XBox 360 ($400) + 4 Games(@$50 each)
- Playstation 2 ($130) + extra controller ($20) and 9 games ($50)
- Nintendo DS ($130) + 11 Games (@$40 each) + 1 $30 game
- Nintendo Gamecube ($100) + 10 Games (@$50 each)
- World of Warcraft for 40 months (3 years and 4 months!) (at $15 a month)
- 60 movie tickets (at $10 a ticket)
- 20 DVDs (at $15 a DVD)
- Half the cost of a $1200 HDTV.
Notice that $600 is just the console price -- it doesn't include any other games or any other extra controllers. Blu-ray, unfortunately for Sony, is on it's way out -- HD-DVD at present appears to be the media successor to the DVD -- some HD-DVDs even use the reverse side of the disc to a store the DVD version for playback on DVD players. For $600, with the Playstation 3, you can own an already obsolete entertainment doorstop.
What's even worse are the future prospects of the Playstation 3's price: I don't see the price dropping for at least a year, possibly more. Sony currently is losing $300 for each console sold -- given their sales numbers (of 250,000 units) so far, that's about 75 million dollars -- it's a small price to pay provided that the software sales make up for it. Components do get cheaper as time passes, but given that Sony's already spent a fair chunk of money on this system, in order to drop the retail price even $50 dollars, the cost of the components and manufacturing, they'd need to cut out at minimum the $300 they're losing on each system sold. I suspect we'll see the PS3 hit a low of $450 in 3 years by the end of 2009, possibly less if it Sony gives up on the PS3 and Blu-ray quickly enough.
Link (Syndey Morning Herald)
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