Sony Scuppers False PS3 Price Talk

You know all those reports out there saying the PS3 is going to cost €500? They're wrong. Or so Sony says. Full details inside.

Most of the big questions about the PlayStation 3 have been answered by now, save one: How much will it cost? Until recently all we had to go on were the repeated (and oddly phrased) warnings from Sony boss Ken Kutaragi that it would be expensive. For a while, earlier this week, it seemed that Sony officials in Europe were starting to talk numbers, but the company has since insisted that the stories circulating are inaccurate.

Sony's French boss, George Fornay, reportedly said during a radio interview with Generations Europe 1 this week that the PlayStation 3 would cost between €499 and €599 ($615 to $740), according to an article at Next Generation.

"If we take into account Blu-ray, HD video with drives priced at around €1,000 and above, [the PS3] will be a bargain," Fornay reportedly said, in a similarly sourced article at GameSpot.

"If we only look at the game function, it's true that consoles were usually priced under €500. We will be at this price range. It will be expensive if we only look at the game aspect of the machine, but it will be very cheap if we account for the set of technologies that it will integrate."

But Sony's Nick Sharples told Next Generation today that Fornay did not mention any prices and was instead responding to a figure - in dollars - given by the interviewer.

"At no point did [Fornay] ever refer to a specific price for [the PS3]," Sharples told Next Generation. "He was referring to a $500 price that the interviewer had questioned to him, explaining the relative value of the PS3 console in relation to Blu-ray disc players on the high-end and consoles on the low-end."

So after all that we're no closer to finding out how much we should be saving up if we want to get a PlayStation 3 at the end of the year. There was talk around the time of Sony's PlayStation 3 announcement in Japan last month that it would cost at least ¥50,000 ($425), but Sony has refused to comment further.

Meanwhile, what is confirmed is that the PlayStation 3 will launch worldwide in early November. Sony will go into more detail about the system's launch at E3 next month.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games