PS3 Kept Dear So As Not to Annoy

Plus Reeves gives more reasoning for not cutting the PS3's price in Europe.

What do you find annoying? Is it those car insurance commercials that never seem to go away? Or perhaps it's the trains, which seem to be splintering before our eyes. David Reeves is looking out for you, and he's made sure not to annoy you any further by making the PlayStation 3 cheaper.

Speaking to semi-official Sony blog Three Speech, the European PlayStation boss said that, since July isn't really a month for games and the PS3 is "doing quite well on a regional level", Sony saw no need to cut the price of the PS3 in the UK.

"We thought if we reduced the price, we'd annoy a lot of people," Reeves said in an interview. "We did think about it, but we also felt that it wasn't doing that badly. In the US, they've been going for more than six months, so they took the decision that going down in price was a better thing to do than a value pack."

Reeves was referring, of course, to the news out of E3 this month that while would-be buyers in the US would see the console come down in price - if only on a temporary basis, to clear out stock of the outmoded 60 GB PS3 - their British compatriots would have to settle for a bundle that includes copies of Resistance: Fall of Man and MotorStorm and a second controller, all for the same £425 price the console has been selling for since March.

According to Reeves' maths, the effect of including the games and a second controller amounts to much the same thing as the US price drop. In that case, why not just drop the price?

"We wanted to have a level playing field. But not drop the price - because we believe that dropping the price in the summer doesn't work," he said.

Reeves wouldn't confirm a price drop before the end of the year for the UK, and he said that winning the battle this Christmas wasn't terribly important either.

"I don't think this Christmas is necessarily the most critical one - I think that's going to be Christmas 08," he said. "I see this more as kind of like a tsunami - it starts small and gathers speed, and eventually, after four or five years, it will start to take you over."

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo