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Sony Denies Holiday PSP Price Drop 62

Posted by Zonk from the can't-blame-us-for-hoping dept.
1up reports that Sony has no intention of dropping the PSP's price this holiday season. The idea of a price drop, put forth by CNN's Game Over column, has been flatly denied by the company. 1up writer Susan Arendt thinks they may be just a little bit false here: "I'm going to be the 'glass half-full' person and suggest that by saying the company 'currently' has no plans to cut the price 'at this time,' the Sony rep wasn't just being repetitive and redundant, but rather suffering from a Hamlet-esque condition of protesting too much, indicating that Sony does, in fact have a big fat price drop planned, especially considering their history of holiday price cuts."
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Sony Denies Holiday PSP Price Drop More

Sony Denies Holiday PSP Price Drop

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  • Already? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mrxak ( 727974 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @10:43AM (#15919312)
    We're talking about the holiday season already? Isn't it August?

    • Re:Already? (Score:3, Funny)

      by Kryis ( 947024 )
      What? You mean you haven't got your presents sorted already?! Theres only 130 shopping days 'til Christmas!
    • We're talking about the holiday season already? Isn't it August?

      I was at Costco last night. They had Christmas wrapping paper, a lot more toys than usual, and an assortment of musical instruments and youngster-oriented art supplies that they typically put up only around the Christmas holiday season.

      On the summer breeze I could have sworn I heard sleigh bells as I left the warehouse. I felt an instant rush of icy wind that vanished as quickly as it came. As I got into my 140 degree car, I felt the joy sta
      • At this rate, we'll have the holiday season starting July 5th.
      • That car isn't hot. It was 144F outside here, in the early afternoon. I am completely serious...this is every day in the Iraqi summer.

        Christmas practically didn't exist for me in 2005 (deployment) and seems so far away while I'm in the middle of this windy, burning, filthy desert country. Fertile crescent my ass. [/resentment]

        This is the time for corporations to start thinking about the holiday season. 90 days out is a good time to prepare for major events like that; considering price increases/de

    • Re:Already? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 )
      For video games companies, the crunch time is now to get titles ready and out the door before the holiday shopping season between Thanksgiving and Christmas. PC titles can wait until the very last minute to go on the shelves. Console titles have to get approval before going to manufacturing and that's usually six to eight weeks before they appear in the stores. The PR machine has to go into overdrive to get gamers and ordinary consumers interested in the new titles. You know for sure that the ERSB will be c
      • Are you implying CJ was naughty?

        My Grand Theft Auto avatar only acted in the finest, most upstanding manner towards his fellow citizens. He spends his days walking to the nearby gym for excercise sessions and on to the Cluckin' Bell for a rewarding meal (salad, of course).

        CJ is always willing to help old ladies cross the street by providing cover fire from the bushes using an AK-47. And if any fellow motorists find themselves in a minor fender bender, he's happy to drive their car to the repair shop f
    • I typically listen to KTIS [ktis.org], a Christian radio station. Just on last Friday I heard an advertisement for the annual, big Christmas concert that they always hype. Then they played one of the songs. I almost marched down there to steal any evidence of Christmas only to return it some time in October...

      But for now I'll just resort to my iPod for sanity.

  • Of course... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CaseM ( 746707 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @10:45AM (#15919323)
    they have "no intention" of dropping the price this holiday. If they announced that, whatever sales they might have had betweeen now and then would be practically nil as people just waited. This is the same thing Nintendo did with the DS Lite. They claimed over and over the no DS Lite re-design was in the works. Why? To keep sales of the old DS's up, of course.
    • Erm...I meant "no DS re-design".

    • Re:Of course... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Volante3192 ( 953645 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @10:48AM (#15919368)
      This is, of course, assuming there would be sales of the PSP between now and 3 months from now.
      • Touche ;)

      • This is, of course, assuming there would be sales of the PSP between now and 3 months from now.

        They sold [scei.co.jp] about 800,000 units last month and about 5 million units in the last two months last year.

        The Slashdot crowd likes to pretend the PSP is an abject failure, but I think I'd be pretty happy if my company was failing as bad as this.

        TW

        Oh yeah, save your breath about units shipped vs units sold. The "shipped" number is only inaccurate as far as units in customer hands is concerned. As far as historical data

        • Oh yeah, save your breath about units shipped vs units sold. The "shipped" number is only inaccurate as far as units in customer hands is concerned.

          BINGO!

          • Re:Of course... (Score:2, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Oh yeah, save your breath about units shipped vs units sold. The "shipped" number is only inaccurate as far as units in customer hands is concerned.

            And you can have more shipped units than actual physical units!

            Let's say Sony makes 1 million PSPs and ships them out to retailers. Shipped = 1,000,000 units.
            Let's say BIG_RETAILER sends back 100,000 PSPs because they were, well, gathering dust. Shipped = 1,000,000 units (Sony did ship 1,000,000 units, after all, just that BIG_RETAILER shipped Sony 100,000 PSPs)

            • Let's say Sony makes 1 million PSPs and ships them out to retailers. Shipped = 1,000,000 units.
              Let's say BIG_RETAILER sends back 100,000 PSPs because they were, well, gathering dust. Shipped = 1,000,000 units (Sony did ship 1,000,000 units, after all, just that BIG_RETAILER shipped Sony 100,000 PSPs).
              Now lets say Sony sells to DISCOUNT_RETAILER those 100,000 PSPs. Look! Shipped = 1,100,000 units.

              This is, of course, fascinating, but is there real evidence that Sony is actually doing this? I mean, real evide

              • BTW, is homebrew good enough to justify a second PSP? I have just one that I only play comercial games on. I've been a little leary about playing fast and loose with firmware upgrades and downgrades. I know a lot of people love homebrew, but does the software justify the price of a second, dedicated console?

                Of course homebrew justifies the price of a Nintendo DS. Even a DS Lite that is fully tricked out for homebrew [pocketheaven.com] costs less than a PSP Value Pack.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by EiZei ( 848645 )
                  Don't forget that you will also need a new memory stick to go with that value pack, those things are real expensive (gee wonder why).
        • Ummmm...according to MediaCreate, Sony sold at most 250,000 PSPs last month. According to NPD, Sony sold less than 150,000 PSPs last month. That's 400,000, and that's being generous (during the month of July Sony sold between 40,000 & 49,000 PSPs per week, I gave them 50,000 each week, then multiplied by 5, even though July only had 4 1/2 weeks in it, also I don't remember the exact NPD numbers, but I know the DS sold over 350,000 and the PSP sold about half as many as the DS).

          Now, according to the

    • Right, but when Nintendo did it, it wasn't evil. That's the difference.
      • Doing something like this is fairly minor. When a company like Nintendo, who has a history of not being evil, does it people are willing to forgive them. It's like if a really nice guy gets caught telling a little white lie, no big deal.

        But Sony has a history of evilness so people are harsher on them.

      • I don't think any company doing this should be considered "evil" You'd have to be an idiot to admit to a price drop any more then 2 or 3 days in advance. Unless you want to loose sales while people wait for it. Pretty much every console company that has ever had a price drop (meaning ALL of them) has denied the price drop until it actually happened... it's business.

        The only problem here is the idiot journalist who thinks they're going to get a straight answer about a price drop out of PR...

  • No shit, Sherlock. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @10:46AM (#15919340)
    Why on earth would Sony announce in August that they will be cutting the price of the PSP in 4 months? The sales would tank until the cut, as people would just wait a couple of months to save some money. So of course Sony will deny any future price cuts.

  • Of course they will deny it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RootsLINUX ( 854452 ) <rootslinux@gmail.cDEBIANom minus distro> on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @10:47AM (#15919352) Homepage
    It's obvious why they are going to deny this. If they announce it, that means their already lack-luster PSP sales will go down, since consumers are now aware of the eminent price drop that has been confirmed. They would be insane for announcing a planned price drop that won't occur for months, even if they really are planning it.

    Then again, this is Sony we're talking about, so sanity doesn't really play much of a factor in my argument. :(

  • Too much? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Aladrin ( 926209 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @10:48AM (#15919365)
    They protest too much? They said 'No' 1 time. That doesn't sound like much to me. Instead it sounds like a wanna-be reporter desperately trying to put spin on lack of news.
  • I'm definately with the majority on this one. They have probably just lost almost all their sales due to this. I was planning on getting a PSP eventually, but this slows my plans by a long time. Maybe they'll go down to $100 in the next 10 years and I can be able to buy one. Plus, why are we talking about Christmas in August? Doesn't Thansgiving and Halloween come before that?
  • I don't see that it even means anything. Is there a downside to lying to customers about this? If there is a price drop, will sony reimburse customers for the price difference? Can customers file a successful class action suit for $50+tax each (or whatever the drop amounts to) based on this information?

    By the way, I have no intention of posting any non-insightful posts for the rest of 2006.
    • I don't think you can file a class action suit over a price drop. To do so would really set a bad precident. It would mean the end of the budget games for one thing. However, many stores (such as wal-mart and target) WILL price-match themselves within a certain time period. That is, if you buy a PSP one day, and the price drops within the following X days (policy varies by store), you can take your reciept back and get a refund of the difference.

      What really sucks though, is when the stores play the reve
      • Are they even forced to accept returns of items without receipt?
        • Required, no. And very few will give cash back if you don't have a reciept, but many brick and mortar stores will give store credit for anything that their computer system recognizes. Especially in the weeks right after Christmas. Lots of stores relax their return policies for the after-christmas returns, because it's just too much hassle to deal with angry customers who either lost or never had reciepts for their gifts.
    • Is there a downside to lying to customers about this?
      Well.. maybe not from a business standpoint...

      From a customer loyalty standpoint, sure.

      I've always told myself that if I ever get into business, I'll be damn poor if it means at least I'm honest. In my lifetime I've passed up more than my fair share of lucrative opportunities because I didn't want to sell my soul for a buck.
  • I have abandoned all interest in the PSP and the PS3. Instead, I'll be purchasing a Wii for myself and a DS Lite for my wife. The funny thing is, I actually own a very nice Pioneer plasma and I still couldn't care less about the 360 or the PS3.
  • Ever notice that whenever a big company denies something, everyone quickly wonders what they're up to? If I were running a big company, I'd deny things just to watch people analyze them.

    "We have no plans to merge with Panasonic at this time."
    "The idea that there are plans to develop a new laptop line at this time is patently false."
    "We firmly deny that we are planning to expand into the pharmaceutical business."
    "We do not currently receive, and have never received, the majority of our new technology f
  • This is simply the Osborne Effect [wikipedia.org] in action.
  • ..will be in second-hand units on eBay immediately post-holiday, as people trade in their unwanted gifts.
    • The price dop will be in used DS units flooding the market, since all their owners upgraded to the super cool DS-Lite. ;)

      I've heard five people claim they swapped out their "old" DS for a new "DS-Lite" recently ... and PSP owners are accused of wasting money? =D
  • The PSP's are literally exploding off the shelves...
  • I guess there are:

    Lies,
    Big Lies,
    and Sony.

  • whew, that was close (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tsiangkun ( 746511 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @01:19PM (#15920846) Homepage
    I thought I missed the opportunity to get a $250 PSP, thanks SONY for keeping them around a little longer.

    I for one, do not, want a cheap-ass $150 PSP to compliment my $700 PS3.
    I hope they raise the price just to show the world how much better the PSP is than the DS.

  • Other holiday non-plans for Sony (Score:3, Funny)

    by wilson_c ( 322811 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @03:12PM (#15921749)
    In related news: Sony denies plans to release compelling content for PSP.

    A Sony spokesman today denied that Sony was doing anything that would encourage potential customers to purchase its PSP portable gaming system, currently languishing on store shelves everywhere. "Sony really likes what Nintendo has done with the DS. Apple's video iPod is pretty impressive too. We can't do anything to touch that and we think that even trying would just muddy the waters and possibly confuse customers into purchasing our system". To avoid millions of disappointed customers, Sony has developed a three point program:

    1. Keep prices uncompetitively high.
    2. Avoid revisions with features competitive to the DS.
    3. Keep working hard to thwart hackers trying to run homebrew mods: as the only group interested in the PSP, Sony needs to remain vigilant in case this community comes up with the great games that they haven't.

    Other related stories: UMD - Today's Betamax or Today's MiniDisc?
    • 2. Avoid revisions with features competitive to the DS.


      Tell me which features the DS has that the PSP doesn't.

      Can the DS download podcasts and vodcasts directly to itself without additional hardware?

      View photos, watch video 9both on the stick and streamed via Location Free?

      Download demos directly to itself?

  • PSP is already lacking what the DS offers. Innovation.And a affordable price. Functionality is alright, but should that not be standard? Should i have to pay an extra $50 for that UMD i might use twice? How many people ctully buy the UMDs? This is the case of SONY offer to much new tech before anyone really knows or is interested in it. I can get a DS Lite for $120. Fun. Cheap. And WiFi play. Im sold. PSP is overpriced and the games are mostly been ports latley. We all know how much ports suck ( i.e. Gamec

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