PSP Price Drop Tomorrow
- Scribbled on April 2nd, 2007 by Devin Grimes
- Filed in Sony PSP
One of the main gripes gamers have had with the PSP, and perhaps it’s main disadvantage in the handheld war with Nintendo is it’s steep price point at $200 USD. While it edges out the DS in graphics and processing power, it’s still failed to capture the ever-so-popular casual audience.
Starting tomorrow, Sony’s portable machine will drop down in price to a reported $169 USD. Which begs the question: “Is this just further proof of the doom and gloom that the device is in?” I’m going to go ahead and say no. The system has really started to take off lately (finally), with solid releases already under it’s belt, and prospected hits looming in our near future (God of War).
At a price point now only $40 premium over their competition, it’s definitely moving more into the impulse buy category that the DS has had so much success with. Now all they have to do is lower the price of games down to a more competitive price, and they may become a legitimate competitor to Nintendo’s 20+ years of handheld domination.
(Thanks Kotaku)
April 3rd, 2007 at 1:56 am
Yeah, this really isn’t a ‘doom-and-gloom’ price drop, just a rather standard ‘technology getting long in the tooth’ pricedrop. How much this really helps Sony is going to depend on Nintendo – I don’t think a price drop on the DS Lite is quite due yet (not at the rate that it continues to sell), but the odds of a pack-in game are extremely good, I would bet. Still, I suspect that Nintendo COULD drop the DS price to $99.95 and still make a profit on the hardware, which would probably wipe out the advantage in the PSP price drop. As I said, though, I don’t think they’re quite ready to do that yet.
Anyway, I’m really more interested in the rumors of a re-designed PSP (not a new system – just a DS->DS Lite sort of thing.) I don’t think the PSP is going to be ready to compete evenly with the DS until that happens.