No PS3 Price Drop Before 2009 - Sony

Europeans can look forward to paying more than everyone else for a long time to come.

The PlayStation 3 will debut at £425 in the UK in March and you can bet that the price won't change much until 2009 at the earliest.

That's the message coming out this week out of Sony, which has been on the defensive again after revealing that it was replacing hardware from the PS2 currently included in US and Japanese PS3s with software emulation.

In a report from Dow Jones, reprinted by Kotaku, Sony's Kimberly Otzman said that the PlayStation 3 would not be getting a price drop for at least another two years.

Otzman's comments echo those of Sony's Phil Harrison, who told GameDaily recently that the company isn't feeling any pressure to make it easier for customers to afford the new system.

Commenting on recent statements made by Sony's Jack Tretton, Harrison said that the company would be lowering the cost to make PS3s through research and development.

This would take the form of reducing the number of components in the system, such as the recent decision to drop completely the Emotion Engine and partly the Graphics Synthesizer - PS2 components included in the PS3. Sony admitted the move would mean that fewer PS2 games would be playable on European PS3s.

So much for making the PS3 cheaper to make, but when will buyers see the benefits of that? Not anytime soon, according to Harrison.

"At the appropriate time and when we can afford to, the business model of the industry is to pass those savings onto the consumer, but we're a long way away from doing that yet," he said.

Harrison added that there was no pressure on Sony to lower the retail price of the PS3 in 2007. He also said that Sony has no intention of reintroducing rumble to the PS3 controller.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo