Stringer Promises To “Refine” PS3 Price Before Christmas

Sony Group Chairman and CEO Howard Stringer has appeared to confirm that the PlayStation 3 will undergo a price cut before the Christmas gift buying season this year, indicating that the company is currently looking at ways to drop the price without incurring undue extra losses. Speaking in a new video interview with the Financial Times, Howard acknowledges customer resistance to the current high price of the PlayStation 3 but indicates that the company is trying to “refine” how much more it can afford to cut the price of the console. When asked if this process would be completed by Christmas, Stringer answered, “Yes, of course.” Although said in a relatively offhand manner, Stringer’s comments appear to be open to little interpretation other than signaling a price cut for the console, in unspecified regions, this autumn. “I think PlayStation 3’s travails are solved by time”, added Stringer. “Energy [in PlayStation 3 sales] by Christmas, and then you will begin to see break out games.” He also went on to assert that current games were only using 20 percent of the console’s “bandwidth” and that future titles would be seen to be taking fuller advantage of the format’s graphical power. Howard was also asked about the continuing success of the Wii, which outsold both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 combined last month in the U.S., saying that it was based on a “very good business model”. However, he implied that the two consoles were not competing, but were instead “complementary and supplementary”. “Nintendo Wii has been a successful enterprise, and a very good business model, compared with ours... because it’s cheaper,” said Stringer. “That is what we are studying at the moment. That’s what we are trying to refine.”