Sony still doesn’t understand the price/value proposition
June 2nd, 2009Sony just officially announced the PSP Go at E3 (which, as described by Kaz Hirai himself was not really a secret any more), which amounts to a slightly smaller PSP with no UMD drive and slide-out controller. While I’m personally skeptical that a fully digital portable game device is something most consumers want, I could see how it could fill a particular niche in the market. However, Sony appears intent on pricing the PSP Go out of consideration for, I’m guessing, the vast majority of their potential customers. The PSP Go will retail for $250 when it debuts, compared to the retail price of $170 for the current PSP-3000 (the PSP-2000 can still be found and is even less than that).
So, let me see if I understand this. I have a choice between a product with a larger screen, full backwards and forwards compatibility with games (UMD discs) that can be resold if necessary or another system that is slightly more portable (because its smaller), but doesn’t play UMD discs so cannot play virtually every game already released for the system and cannot be resold if you wanted. I would think that the choice between those would be fairly obvious, and that’s before I even take into account any price. Even so, the $80 difference would certainly be a big enough difference to seal my choice. I’m sorry, the PSP Go basically adds no value to the PSP… in fact, it subtracts a tremendous value from it unless the only thing you care about is having something a little smaller.
Sony’s mistake here seems to be that they are pricing the PSP Go as an upgrade from the PSP 3000, rather than an alternative. I haven’t seen anything to suggest that it is the former, so it seems very much the latter, and it should be priced to reflect that.
Posted in E3, Idiocy, Jeff, Sony |
June 2nd, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Yeah, it’s basically, “Here’s something that costs us less to make, so pay us twice as much!” But then Sony’s business decisions have always been baffling.
I’m given to understand that the phrase “10-year life cycle” reared its ugly head again today too.
June 2nd, 2009 at 7:48 pm
I have more sympathy for the “10-year life cycle” thing as their PS2 is still selling, and not only that, good games still (occasionally) come out for it (I’m looking at you Shin Megami Tensei games)…
That being said, somehow I think the PS3 won’t have the kind of staying power that the PS2 has had… The Wii is far more likely to be the 10-year console this time around with its massive install base.
June 12th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
Fully agreed. In fact, I’d go as far as saying this gen is really a let down. Each product has positive attributes that are in more than one way let down my its other attributes. Ironically, the PC sector is really getting better. THe PS2 was well deserving of its life span, seeing how it represents a console done really right.