SCEE's Reeves: 'We Simply Have To Suffer A Little'

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) president David Reeves says the PlayStation 3 isn't yet due for a price cut, and remains positive about the system's outlook despite Sony's calamitous third quarter financial results. "We simply have to suffer a little, go down in market share and mind-share," Reeves told British newspaper The Guardian. The company's game division recently reported a year-on-year sales decrease of 32.2 percent for the quarter ending December 31st, down from ¥581.2 billion ($6.43bn) in 2007 to ¥393.8 billion ($4.36bn), primarily due to the strong yen and a drop in all of its video game hardware unit sales. "It's like Ali v Foreman -- go eight or nine rounds and let him punch himself out. We're still standing, we're still profitable and there's a lot of fight in us. I don't say we will land a knockout blow, but we're there and we're fighting." Despite lagging sales for all of Sony's video game hardware, the SCEE boss indicated that the company isn't yet ready to mark down the PlayStation 3's to meet its lower-priced competitors, Nintendo's Wii and Microsoft's Xbox 360. "Admittedly, in the current climate, more people will go for the lower price, but we still make a profit and that is our objective," he says. Reeves, however, adds that Sony has learned a lot from Microsoft and Nintendo, complimenting the latter for "brilliantly" growing the market and evolving its handheld offerings. As Sony Corp. prepares a restructuring that will see 16,000 employees laid off from the overall company in an effort to save $2.9 billion for the financial year ending March 2010, the SCEE president again insisted that significant job cuts wouldn't reach the PlayStation division. "We took our cuts in 07 and 08, we restructured and streamlined and we're as lean, as mean as we can be," says Reeves. "I have seen no plans to cut jobs and it wouldn't be productive to do so."