TRUE CONFESSIONS 5 - March 2001
| THE PRICE IS WRONG Hello viewers! You might not know this, but Engine isn’t the first games magazine I’ve written for. In fact, I’ve been around the games business for years, and for the last couple I’ve spent large amounts of time slagging off Sega and Nintendo for failing to learn the lessons of how Sony managed to make the first Playstation such a phenomenal runaway success. Imagine my surprise and embarrassment, then, to realise that the other company who’ve failed to learn the lessons of the PS1’s success are Sony. According to recent reports, Sony have said that there will be no UK price cut for the PS2 in 2001, which conflicts with everyone in the industry’s previous belief that we’d see a significant cut no later than this April. Now, for various reasons the inclusion of a DVD player means that Sony don’t quite have the freedom to slash the hardware price that they did with the first PS, but nevertheless if they’re really planning to keep the PS2 at £300 until next year then Sony’s management need locking up. With a hungry tiger. In a bad mood. You've probably already noticed that, although supplies have been just a trickle, pretty much every major retailer has had PS2s freely available to buy over the counter for the last couple of months. And yet, despite all the newspaper hype about the "incredible demand" and all the morons paying ludicrous prices in the first few days, even these highly limited stocks haven’t been snapped up. If Sony think that the machine is going to sell enough to give it an unassailable user base in time for the launch of Xbox and Gamecube, they must have been sniffing marker pens in their lunchbreak. They seem to be pinning their hopes on "killer apps", but no matter how pretty the rain effects are, only a total loony is going to fork out almost £400 (you’ll need a memory card, remember) just to play Gran Turismo 2 again with better graphics. (MGS 2 stands a better chance, but do you REALLY think it’ll be worth 400 quid? That’s, like, quite a lot of cash, when you think about it.) If Sony haven’t got the price down by at least £50 (and probably £100) by this summer, get your PS2 on eBay straight away and beat the rush. |
"Reverend Stuart Campbell's religion is videogames - he owns more than 35,000 of them. He's a freelance journalist, ex-game developer with Sensible Software and industry analyst who's written for every games magazine worth a damn and a few more besides. Sinners beware." |
