Besides gamers, one of the other species of people who love to talk about the PS3 are the analysts. Now Biz.Gamedaily is quoting two analysts, Michael Pachter from Wedbush Morgan Securities and Jesse Divnich from simExchange, who predict that Sony will tactically bring the price of 80GB PS3 to $499 by the holiday season of 2007.
Michael Pachter stated in his latest report, “We note that Sony recently acknowledged that it will no longer produce its 60GB PS3, and we expect the price of the 80Gb PS3 to be reduced to $499 before the holidays, maintaining a premium SKU at that price point. Any hardware price reduction could serve as a catalyst for sales growth later in the year. We do expect Sony to again be in a position to cut the price of the PS3 in early 2008, when blockbuster games Grand Theft Auto IV and PS3 exclusive Metal Gear Solid 4 will launch.”
Jesse Divnich explains, “After examining more closely the hardware sales of the PS3 over the last 6 months we have come to the conclusion that the PS3 cannot remain competitive in the current North American environment at its current retail offering at $499 and $599. To remain competitive against the other consoles, the Sony PS3 would have to reduce its 80GB SKU by $100 down to $499. Other options, besides a price drop, could be the bundling of more free software titles, which has always been a popular option during the Holiday season.”
simExchange is a video game prediction market. In fact, trading on the simExchange website indicates that Microsoft’s next-gen console – the Xbox 360 may outsell the PS3 by 2 to 1 in the holiday period of 2007. But these are just predictions and we will have to wait till the end of 2007 or early 2008 to see if Sony really cuts the price of the PS3.