With Sony finally revealing the PlayStation 4 at E3 last week, and confirming that it will launch this Holiday for $399, many were expecting the company to also announce a price cut for the PlayStation 3. That current-gen price drop didn’t happen, and now a Sony exec has stated that the platform holder has “no plans” to reduce the MSRP for the PS3.
Speaking to GamesIndustry International, Sony Computer Entertainment UK managing director Fergal Gara explained the company’s position on the PlayStation 3, saying:
“There’s no plans as yet. The PlayStation 3 is a system where it hasn’t been particularly easy to get the costs down.”
“We continue to look at opportunities, there may or may not be any more, I genuinely can’t answer to that. But it will certainly be a more keenly priced machine in relative to PlayStation 4. It will sit there as a viable entry level machine for years to come. It will be different by territory as to how long its life is. There’s still a lot of love for PS3,”
The PlayStation 3 is currently sold in several difference SKUs, with the 500GB model offered in a one game/30-day PlayStation Plus bundle for $299 on Sony’s website. Assuming this price holds throughout the remainder of this year, it will put the high-end PS3 just $100 lower than the PlayStation 4’s launch price. This is not a terrible position to be in, and there is certainly a case to be made for not wanting to have too much of a spread between the two consoles, but it certainly would not hurt sales to drop the PS3 by $50 across the board.
Despite what Sony claims, I don’t think we can rule out the possibility of a PlayStation 3 price cut before the end of this year. We won’t hear anything official about it until they are ready to pull the trigger — as it would kill sales to announce it early — but it seems like a reasonable move to make before the Holiday 2013 shopping season ramps up.