I believe that a death blow was dealt yesterday in the battle between Microsoft and Sony for hearts, minds, and opposable thumbs of the world’s gaming community. Microsoft came out hard last holiday season weilding its brand new weapon, XBOX 360. Sony faltered and delayed the release of the much anticipated Playstation 3 until later this year. Sony had been the clear champion with the PS2 and was poised to again soundly trumb the XBOX with their upcoming console.
That is until yesterday when Sony came out and cut its own head off.
Sony Computer Entertainment’s PlayStation 3 will be the most expensive game system on the market when it debuts Nov. 17 in North America.
The much anticipated video game console will sell for $499 for a system that has a 20-gigabyte hard drive or $599 for a system with three times the storage, the company said at a news conference Monday night. Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360 starts at $299.
I will tell you what I am not. I am not a gaming expert. I will never have a show on G4 and I will never win any awards for my gaming abilities.
However, I am a male, age 18-34, who derives a good deal of pleasure from playing video games during some of my free time. I am your average video game player. I was born during the heyday of the arcade, played Pitfall with my dad on our Atari, grew up with my little grey friend the NES, played too much Goldeneye in college, got married and fell in love with my PS2.
The Playstation 3’s price point is astronomically high. Let’s say you buy the basic PS3 and one game. You are out $560. That’s without tax. I live in a city that has a 10% sales tax. That would bring the price for a basic system and one game to $616. I think I threw up in my mouth a little.
I predict that come this November, Microsoft will drop the price of the XBOX 360 for holiday shoppers and the battle will be over. Even something as small as a $50 dollar price cut would entice more mothers and fathers to choose the XBOX over the PS3.
Sony, you priced yourselves right out of the game.
Micheal, I have to agree. I wonder how much PS3 will try to play up the whole Blu-Ray feature in order to justify the cost? That’s all I heard about yesterday… features… features… features… But still, who would pay $500 or $600 for the gaming platform? I agree with you, XBOX is going to take a huge chunk of market share this year. I also imagine that more people will get a 360 in the coming months since they now know how expensive the PS3 will be. I know several people personlly that were waiting on buying a 360 until they found out the price point and release date of the PS3. I imagine they’ll be going to the store in the near future to jump on the Microsoft bandwagon.
Couldn’t agree more Chad. Last Christmas, I told my wife that in the near future we would have to decide that if 1) I still wanted to play video games then 2) which next gen console we would buy. I’m personally not interested in buying a new console for at least a few more years. When there is no more new content for my PS2 then I’ll cross that bridge. However, I feel insulted by Sony and this price point.
The only game console I would pay $500 for is a Pac Man or Donkey King arcade cabinet.
You’re right, features, features, features. Which I’m afraid translates into fees, fees, and fees.
Great thoughts Chad.
Peace out.
Give it a few more years and both these consoles will be obliterated by the videogaming “revolution” (pun intended) that is the Wii. Nintendo will have its retribution on these two video game titans. Buts seriously…..if priced between 150 and 200 as projected, with the wii’s revolutionary game play style nintendo might not only come out on top of this console war but may also change the way we play video games forever.