Koller: PS2 could steal Wii market share

Sony Computer Entertainment America’s hardware marketing boss John Koller has stated that he believes the recent price drops to PS2 in the Europe and the US – though not in the UK – could see the PS2 eat into Wii’s market share.

We do think the $99 price point could steal some share from Wii,” Koller told GameDaily.

From a technological standpoint, the Wii is much closer to the PS2 than it is to the next-gen consoles. It’s obviously not an HD box and the software development is on a par with where PS2 development is, so that’s a much more realistic and similar demographic.

Nintendo has done a fantastic job of capturing young and female, which are two areas the PS2 has started to really grab a lot of share recently as well. That’s an interesting battle and we’ll see how it shapes up, but we feel very confident that the $99 price level will allow us to grab our share.

We’re looking at 70-80 titles launching on PS2 this coming year, and about the same number next year in 2010. PS2 shows very little signs of slowing down, and we wanted to continue to really target that lower income consumer.”

Koller also went on to explain why Sony decided to cut the price of PS2 instead of, as many were predicting, lowering the price of its PS3 console.

In terms of the PS3, our is on the versatility of the system and the overall value that’s inherent to the system;” he explained.

We’ve been focusing on development of key software franchises, and this year should be the best software year launched yet. On PS3, we look at that as a significant advantage versus Xbox 360. In particular, our first party group has really stepped up with some tremendous franchises.”