Sony Admits Early Adopter “Tax” On PSP Go!
- Scribbled on June 30th, 2009 by Jonah Falcon
- Filed in Interviews, Sony PSP, WTF
Game Guru is reporting that Sony is freely admitting that the $250 price tag for the PSP Go! is artificially inflated for early adopters, despite it costing more than a PSP-2000 with a Memory Stick Duo.
According to SCEE President Andrew House:
“[The R&D costs] aren’t the factors [for the inflated price]. When you introduce a new piece of hardware you have the opportunity to say there is a certain premium that is associated with it, and we took that into account.”
Translation: “There are suckers out there who will buy everything and anything when it first comes out.”
There’s a severe problem with Sony’s logic here, however. The PSP Go! is not a new piece of hardware, any more than the PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2 slim-form consoles were. Furthermore, what happened the last time Sony issued expensive console software?
Let us know what you think.
June 30th, 2009 at 11:28 am
Absolutely bone-headed move. So what will their argument be when sales tank? How are retailers going to feel when they’re stocking product that doesn’t move? (like they aren’t already in that situation.)
September 17th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
[...] even for just pure aesthetic reasons. It was already a bad sign when Sony brushed off the $250 as an “early adopter” tax – not smart when you’re basically telling people you’ll drop the price sometime [...]