Sony wants PS3 price cut to win over Xbox and Wii owners

The decision to cut the price of the PS3 is not related to market pressures and has been planned for over a year, Sony has said.

We see a lot of opportunity in the market, and I want to note that we’ve been planning this price drop for quite some time,” SCEA’s director of hardware marketing John Kolelr told GameSpot.

We look at it in a long-term view, so 12 to 18 months prior to now, we knew that we were going to be dropping the price. We decided that the time was right now because we saw some of the market shifts occurring with new demographics to the market, primarily some of the family and casual consumers coming in, the new price point would be more palatable to them.

But we also knew that the software lineup we have coming this fall is really the best we’ve seen on the PS3 so far. So marrying the two together was really an important thing for us.”

Koller adds that the new RRP for the machine is specifically designed to win over consumers who have until now owned either an Xbox 360 or Wii.

The other rationale about having the price drop now is that our arms are wide open for Xbox 360 and Wii consumers to come aboard the platform,” he added.

We knew with the software lineup we have the time was right to say we’re open to all gamers, whether it’s a second console for the household or a new one on the family demographic side. Either is great for us, and with the software lineup we have coming, we think that 360 and Wii consumers will certainly be very interested with the new price point.”