Retailers offer Sony an ultimatum: drop PSP price OR ELSE
UncleSporky
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Registered User regular
OR ELSE WHAT?!
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3158013
I've totally expected a price drop for the PSP for a long time now - hell, it's new value has actually gotten worse since launch, since you don't even get anything bundled with the system anymore. EDIT: I guess this is wrong, my fault for not keeping up on the current pricing. It's still essentially the same, though.
What do you guys think? Is Sony going to avoid this price drop altogether by just rolling out a PSP redesign, as has already been rumored? Or will they finally put their system into what I consider a more reasonable price range?
I would totally buy it at this point for $200.
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3158013
With sales of the PSP lagging (Sony's PSP hardware shipments to retailers last Fall were down 72 percent over the year before, only a meager 10,000 units in the U.S.), word is that a few big name retailers have given Sony a mandate: drop the price or they'll drop the system from their stores. Entirely. With shelf space at a premium, the expectation is for Sony to do something substantial to keep its hardware moving -- or else.
I've totally expected a price drop for the PSP for a long time now - hell, it's new value has actually gotten worse since launch, since you don't even get anything bundled with the system anymore. EDIT: I guess this is wrong, my fault for not keeping up on the current pricing. It's still essentially the same, though.
What do you guys think? Is Sony going to avoid this price drop altogether by just rolling out a PSP redesign, as has already been rumored? Or will they finally put their system into what I consider a more reasonable price range?
I would totally buy it at this point for $200.
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I love my PSP but Sony's mismanagement of it annoys me greatly.
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I didn't think the PSP was selling that bad, but if there's any remote truth to this, we all know the strongarm tactics Wal-Mart is capable of.
I'm totally loving 1up's bold proclamation, by the way:
I must say, I honestly regret buying my PSP. I've bought a whole one game since I purchased mine about a year and a half ago, and I have two review copies that I play rarely. Sony can lower the price, they can knock out a PSP2, they can do whatever they want, but if there aren't any quality titles then the console is just a waste of plastic and silicon.
For people who've looked at what's available and decided the PSP is for them, it might be worth your while to wait and see if there's any truth to all of these "price drop/redesign/enhanced bundle/comes with punch and pie" rumors. If you can hack it for four months.
Your scenario would work pretty well... it would still be more expensive than the DS Lite, but it would be within spitting distance.
I'm amazed Sony hasn't tried to price the PSP more competitively... it's almost as if they don't want to win the handheld war. You'd think by now the whole "of course people will buy it, it's got a "Playstation" label on it!" corporate mindset would have evaporated by now.
Just curious, anyone know what the manufacturing costs on the PSP are?
The console is now home to some very good remakes and some very good retro compilations, but they're not worth buying a console for. Right now my PSP serves as a wireless web browser, and that's all I use it for. That's disappointing, especially when it showed so much promise when it first launched. I mean shit, even Tycho was enthralled when the system launched and, like me, he realised he'd made a mistake.
Anecdotal evidence all around, but I don't think you're the only person to feel that way. I've had two friends get excited about the PSP, only to sell it a year later. There's been lots of internet postings saying the same thing. The PSP seemed to have tons of potential, but Sony didn't really encourage the development of awesome games that capitalized on the portable experience rather than rehashing the PS2.
The game situation is veeeeeeerrrry sloooooowwwly changing, but the "PSP is a disappointment" meme has pretty much crystalized for the gaming community as a whole.
Wait, no. That sounds wrong. But you get the general idea.
I realize that a lot of people like to buy a system like this new but I can't see why buying a used one would be a bad thing, especially if you have the opportunity to test it out before you buy it. It just seems like you can find your own "deals" on PSPs if you look hard enough.
It was in Best Buy running ATV game or something.
The first thing I noticed was the ghosting issue. Then the library of generic sport and racing titles. May be things changed from when it was launched, but the price still...
I bought mine right after Christmas, and I own 5 games for it, 1 coming with the system for free. The only reason I bought one is because I managed to get one through Circuit City for $160 (With the free game to boot.) It's a nice little system, and there's a good 20 or so games that I want for it, with about 6 being in the "Holy shit, must have" category. My only two qualms with it is the price of the games itself ($40 seems a bit much, $30 is the sweet spot.) and the way it handles video. Circuit City has a "Buy 1 get one free" deal on some UMD movies, and from what I saw yesterday, the only two that I would want is Men in Black & 50 First Dates. MIB I've seen repeatedly and I'm pretty tired of it, and 50FD I've never seen but I'm sure it's kinda crummy. Still, at $5 a pop it's not a bad deal. Regardless, I ended up picking up Contact for $16.96 instead. I might go back and pick up those UMDs, but they only had one copy of 50FD left. So, UMDs are a bust, the few I want to actually buy I can't find. On top of that, properly converting video for the unit is difficult, not that I'd use the thing for video much at all--to me it's a game machine.
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That's the thing, though.
If this article is correct, Sony's been pulling a smoke screen. One of the advantages that reporting units "shipped" over units "sold" is that no one knows exactly how well or poorly the unit is selling. You just flood the market with product, and it looks like you are doing great.
What appears to have happened is that Sony flooded the market SO heavily that retailers have stopped ordering PSP's. This caused the units shipped number to -CRASH-, and hard. And when that happens, the smoke screen is revealed to be just that -- smoke.
We've always looked weirdly at that disconnect between hardware and software. Now, it looks like that disconnect isn't as large as we thought.
Even though we only get "shipped" numbers from Sony themselves, we've still got pretty accurate hardware numbers for the US from NPD and very accurate hardware numbers from Media Create for Japan. For Europe it's a hard to tell, but I think you can get a pretty good picture overall of how well the PSP is selling.
As far as I know they include everything else except for subscription fees and digital distribution, which aren't a factor here.
And NPD is also private data.
But note, they could've sold fine in Dec. and still over-shipped, causing the plummet in January.
Personally, I have no real problem with used hardware in general, but I'd be wary of a used PSP. I'd buy a used GBA (in fact, I did) or DS, but I know enough people with dead PSPs that I wouldn't want to take the chance on Sony's manufacturing quality.
Well, you've always gotta try before you buy. I'd never buy a PSP off of ebay but if I could try out a used one before I bought it from a guy I'd do it in an instant. In fact, when FFT comes out that's what I plan to do.
I thought the NPD didn't report PSP sales. Or at least I don't recall them doing so the past couple of times
Relating my post back to the thread, as you can see PSP hardware sales are pretty good, especially considering that Sony is making money on each one sold.
As always with Sony, those numbers are shipped and not sold, right? I assume the reason this is happening is because these stores are stocking a ton of them and they're just sitting on the shelves.
Proof of the low numbers from Sony's earnings report.
Now, if it DOES mean, that Sony is only recording how many units leave the factory, regardless of if they are going to a store, or to sit in Sony's warehouse...THAT is pretty dumb.
Either way it doesn't mean much, sold is what's important.
Ordering stock is a massive guessing game. It could be that Wal-Mart decided to order a ton more PSPs in November in anticipation of increased Christmas sales, even though they had some on hand. Whether they sell or not is the problem.
But, even if the PSPs in that scenario don't sell and just rot on the shelves, Sony counts them in their sales figures. Other companies don't count sales figures until they're, y'know, actually sold. Which makes an apples to apples comparison somewhat difficult.
One has to wonder how they'll get rid of the PSPs once/if a revised version of the hardware gets released. I mean, the DS is popular enough that it seemed to have been a non-issue, but if they're already sitting on the shelf getting a new model out seems like a tough sell to retailers.