Collective shrug at $99 PS2
As announced in a number of media outlets today and a story first broken by a number of enterprising store clerks who noticed the change in price in their store inventories (as detailed here), the Sony PlayStation 2 is now $99, a drop of $30. This much anticipated announcement wasn’t what hardcore gaming fans were expecting, especially since it was hyped up at sites like Kotaku, 1up and Smarthouse among a few others.
It isn’t hard to surmise that most gamers were hoping for a drop on Sony’s other console, the PlayStation 3, given that it remains the most expensive console on the market and is significantly trailing both the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 in sales. However, that wasn’t the case, and today’s announcement came off like one big April Fool’s joke.
Why would anyone in their right mind care if a console that has been around for 9 years got a price cut now? Hardcore gamers have already moved on to the next generation of consoles and even the budget conscious may hesitate buying something so close to the end of its life cycle.
Microsoft certainly didn’t bat an eye over the change. As reported in Eurogamer and elsewhere, Microsoft was not unduly threatened by the announcement:
We believe, however, that the future lies in the growth of current generation consoles and Xbox 360, as the fastest growing games console last year, with sales up over 80 per cent, will continue to drive the market.
It’s safe to surmise that Nintendo’s reaction would be similarly blase. A cut in the price of the PS3 may have triggered a price war, but this move doesn’t impress either the competitors or gaming fans.
Sony needs to pay attention to it’s own history. This console situation smacks of the battle between Betamax and VHS. Like the Playstation 3, Betamax was the superior technology of the day. However, market penetration and the variety of available media trumped superior technology back then, and it looks like the same thing will repeat itself. While gamers are impressed with the capability of the PS3, the lack of games and developer reluctance to make games for a platform that lags behind its competitors signal some awful future tidings for the console.
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