News Square Enix: PS3 still too expensive

[CardJoe]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/07...oo_expensive/1

Square Enix head honcho, John Yamamoto, reckons the recent price cut on the PS3 isn't enough. What do you reckon?

Vote or die!

[DXR_13KE]

i am confused on what to vote... it is the most expensive by far.... but you get what you pay even if you don't want some of the functions you get.....

edit: the biggest problem for the PS3 is that its consumer base is small compared to other consoles.....

[CardJoe]

The PS3 is too expensive for what you get IMO. I laugh everytime I hold the shift key too long on my british keyboard and end up typing PS£ instead.

[Vonpo]

Wonder if more game developers think that PS3 is a bad investment for their games?? There seams to be less great titles coming for the PS3 now .. or maybe I'm just bonkers. Anyways back on topic, the PS3 really has an issue when it comes to price in Europe. Its funny to read reports where the distributors claim that their selling of the PS3 is going rather well. Even though the truth is that its not even close to how well PS2 did when it was launched.

[DougEdey]

It's a mental price barrier, for what you get it's a good price, but it's marketed very badly

[sandys]

Its a steal for whats in the box, the problem with that is most people wouldn't know what to do with it and just see it as a games machine and in this scenario its too expensive.

I think they have priced it well, you can't even get a good GPU for that let alone a whole machine thats going to play quality games and movies for the next 5-10years, its also a machine that will probably last out the period unlike its competition.

[steveo_mcg]

I agree the price is fine for what your getting especially compared to the 360, but it so bloody expensive in the UK. As for GPU argument, unless you game on a 32" plasma (small exaggeration i know) a 8800 will do you for a mere £180. As far movie player not really interested in picking a side in the format wars, especially not sony's.

[DXR_13KE]

i voted according to this table


The price of it in the EU of $807 (this affects me), the UK is getting it for $852 and the price of it in Brazil of $1,870 ().

[Firehed]

Too expensive so far, and still too few games (and the few they have are quite expensive, though that's true of all the consoles). I'm sure it would make a fantastic multimedia device, but Sony is too DRM-obsessed to make it genuinely useful, unless I can just dump any content I please on there and have it Just Play (which is why I'm tempted to chip my classic Xbox and put XBMC on it).

Yeah, it might be priced well for the hardware (I disagree - what moron puts seven cores in something and pairs it with a half-gig of RAM?), but that doesn't matter. 95% of people don't care what's in the box so long as it works and looks pretty, and the other 5% have already made up their minds either way.


Having said that, I also think that the other consoles are fairly overpriced for the game library currently available. I've yet to have anything pique my interest on my Wii since Zelda, and the 360 is going to need more than GoW and Halo3 to get me to bite. Of course, I'm sure there's more in there, but I've probably been subconsciously intentionally avoiding it so I can avoid spending even more money on games or another console.

[loratio]

Quote: "Yes, you can and should because PCs are way better than consoles."

Great bias!

[eldiablo]

"With $500, you can buy a personal computer."

This is a bit of an incorrect statement i would say. Yes you can buy a pc for that amount of money, but what you will get will get nowhere close to the possibility's of the ps3.
Sure most people will have to save a bit of money to buy one. But if you really wanna compare it with the price of the xbox 360 you should add the hddvd player. The 360 will still be a bit cheaper, but the gap will be a lot smaller.
Then again, the 360 does have more games (and did on the release?)

[Orgat]

No offense intended at all, but looking at Bit-tech's news headlines it seems something is very wrong And just confirms suspicions I've had for a while now. I see a sprinkling of negative PS3 headlines as recent as 3 hours ago as with this, some 360 news from E3, but absolutely nothing on the showstopper Sony pulled with the Killzone 2 reveal that every other site on the internet is lit up about. What gives? I've had a suspicion for some time that Bit-tech really favours the reporting of apparently negative PS3 news rather than - omg shock - positive PS3 news, but this seals the deal. How on earth could you rush to report something like this and not killzone?

[LoneArchon]

For what you can do with it it is worth the $500. But what most people buy it for it doesn't stack up. The PS3 can run Linux with out a mod chip it has a next gen HD movie player and it is a game console. Most people will buy it for mostly gaming in that use the price is too high to sway buyers especially since there is no current must have game out for it yet.

[devdevil85]

Originally Posted by The Article

Hands up if you think the PlayStation 3 is still too expensive

In regards to the US price drop: For sole gaming: (Right now) Yes; (By the end of Xmas) Honestly, Yes As a complete home entertainment setup: (Right now) No! By the end of Xmas: HELL NO!

[Tim S]

I think at £280 (the price I can get it for in Taiwan), it's actually a very good machine; at ~£390, us Brits are being ripped off plain and simple. The new price in the US just makes it even more of a rip off here - it's almost £150 cheaper in the US. Only problem I see is that I need an HDTV to really make use of the machine's power.

I'm sorely tempted by a 360 because it's at that "right price" but I'm put off by the red ring of death and disc scratching problems. Again, I'd need an HDTV to really enjoy it to its fullest potential, too.

Originally Posted by Orgat

No offense intended at all, but looking at Bit-tech's news headlines it seems something is very wrong And just confirms suspicions I've had for a while now. I see a sprinkling of negative PS3 headlines as recent as 3 hours ago as with this, some 360 news from E3, but absolutely nothing on the showstopper Sony pulled with the Killzone 2 reveal that every other site on the internet is lit up about. What gives? I've had a suspicion for some time that Bit-tech really favours the reporting of apparently negative PS3 news rather than - omg shock - positive PS3 news, but this seals the deal. How on earth could you rush to report something like this and not killzone?

I think that's a bit harsh, isn't it? To be frank, we hadn't actually seen the Killzone 2 news until you actually just mentioned it - we'd moved onto writing content for the rest of the week, but since you've highlighted an interesting story, we're writing it up. We're not out at E3 so we're not reporting live and to suggest that we're giving the PS3 the rough end of the stick is a little unfair.

We didn't choose to release the PS3 almost six months later, with less functionality at a higher price in our region (Europe). To be left out of the price cuts this time around is a tad annoying too, don't you think? Based on this, Sony's hardly doing itself any favours in Europe.

[cozwin]

i think if you compare the consoles the 360 is better yes the ps3 has a stupidly overpowered cpu but video card wise the 360 has it, if 360 didnt have all the problems tbh it would have won the war by now.

[Amon]

I think the pricing is modest after the recently announced price cut. It's still only a tad pricey, notwithstanding the near-endless list of functionality and excellent reliability. Plus, it looks pretty when sitting in a wealthily-furnished room. Admittedly, there are few quality titles for the system, but that shouldn't be tied with the hardware's retail cost.

[The_Beast]

it's too expensive for me but it's worth it for what you get

[CardJoe]

Originally Posted by Orgat

No offense intended at all, but looking at Bit-tech's news headlines it seems something is very wrong And just confirms suspicions I've had for a while now. I see a sprinkling of negative PS3 headlines as recent as 3 hours ago as with this, some 360 news from E3, but absolutely nothing on the showstopper Sony pulled with the Killzone 2 reveal that every other site on the internet is lit up about. What gives? I've had a suspicion for some time that Bit-tech really favours the reporting of apparently negative PS3 news rather than - omg shock - positive PS3 news, but this seals the deal. How on earth could you rush to report something like this and not killzone?

Having written up these stories, I better defend myself methinks.

Basically, I am posting negative Sony things - but only because Sony is messing a few things up which = news. I post just as many things about the 360 repeatedly breaking and not being supported, but at least Microsoft are tackling this with extended warranties.

When Sony do good things, I report it. I always add a little of my own voice and opinion in, thats just the way I roll.

As for Killzone, bear in mind that we are predominantly a hardware, modding and PC gaming site. I've since written up the story as soon as I spotted it, but as Tim points out I can't spend the whole time taking news off other sites. Not unless I want to work for Kotaku, which I don't. I do my morning news and move on to other main articles and features - however with E3 on today I've been spending more time on news than usual and simply missed the Killzone 2 news.

Hope that puts your mind at rest, but if you want to talk about it any further then please just drop me a PM or an email at joe.martin@bit-tech.net and we can talk about it some more.

[Andune]

Konami goes even further than Square Enix though, indicating it may change the exclusivity of Metal Gear Solid 4 if things don't change.

C'mon SE, just do it. Don't wanna buy the (expensive) PS3 just to play MGS4.