Sony looks to be short-changing the UK’s gamers – and not for the first time.
No matter that the Brits, despite sterling’s strength, already seem to pay higher prices than most of our global cousins for just about everything.
The Japanese group has said that it will not repeat this week’s hefty 17 per cent price cut to the 60GB model of the struggling PlayStation 3 that it announced in the US (from $599 to $499) over here. Instead, in the UK, gamers will now get a “starter pack” of software, worth, Sony says, £115 when they buy the console – which will continue to cost £425.
That means that for UK consumers the PS3 remains £125 more expensive than the equivalent Xbox 360 bundle of console and games from Microsoft and £225 dearer than Nintendo’s cheap and cheerful Wii, which comes with two games.
Sony’s reluctance to enter a price war with Microsoft’s Xbox 360 (with which it now shares a price bracket in the US) in Europe is understandable.
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Most analysts, after all, had expected a US cut this year – but not so soon. Moreover, it is estimated that Sony is losing $200 on every PS3 sold. And while selling machines as loss leaders in order to create a market for higher-margin software has historically been a common tactic in the gaming arena, the sector’s economics are changing.
Nintendo’s president, Satoru Iwata, this week confirmed to Times Online that his company is already turning a profit on each Wii – a console that is outselling the PS3 and Xbox 360 by margins of at least two to one.
Meanwhile, European PlayStation fans will now feel doubly disgruntled.
The PS3, Sony had originally promised, would be the first console to arrive in the UK, Europe and Japan simultaneously. As it turned out, while the console made it to the shops in time for Christmas in the US and Japan, production glitches led Sony to scupper the original UK launch date – it only hit the high streets here in March.
A UK price cut could trail by the same margin. In the meantime Sony is forgoing a significant amount of goodwill in Europe.