E3 2006 Wrapup
Well E3 certainly was a very interesting conference for Sony, and the future of Playstation 3, however interesting is not always a good thing. The biggest complaint among gamers leaving the conference was the price of Playstation 3. With a starting price of $500 for the 20 GB model, and a $600 price tag for the 60 GB model, many gamers are no longer able to afford buying a new Playstation 3 console, especially when Microsoft and Nintendo are offering their systems for substantially less. It is understandable that Sony is including a lot more features in the PS3, then it ever did in the PS2, but the question is whether a $200 price increase from the PS2 launch is justified by the addition of a hard drive, wireless controllers, brand new hardware within the console, and all of the other new features? Personally, I am really excited about all of these new feautres, but I’m puzzled why Sony is not able to offer a bare bones version of PS3 for somewhere in the $300-400 price range. Sure Sony can not stay financially stable and offer the full PS3 for $300, but if they took out the hard drive, used slightly less powerful hardware, and used slightly less powerful graphics couldn’t they offer something at a lower price?
$500 is quite a bit of money for a gaming console in today’s electonics market. For $500, you can buy a decent PC. For $500, you can buy a nice television set. For $500, you can buy a nice stereo. $500 just seems too much money for the base model of a console. Throw in the cost of an extra controller, a memory card, and a few games, and you are looking at an initial price of almost $700. The question is whether or not there is any game out there on the market that you want to play on PS3 so badly that you will be compelled to shell out all that cash. Sure, PS3 is going to be the must have gift for Christmas 2006, and it will most likely sell out within stores within hours, but I think you are going to see a lot of the casual gamers turning away from Sony, and choosing to purchase an Xbox 360, or a Nintendo Wii, simply because of cost.
Hopefully for Sony’s sake, and PS3’s sake, they will be able to lower the prices soon after the launch. It would be a shame to see Sony lose its market share to Microsoft and Nintendo simply because of pricing alone. Overall, the PS3 console is amazing, but price is defintely going to be a major problem.
