Kaz Hirai, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, gave some interesting comments regarding the PS3 and its competitors. His statements were given in an interview with the San Jose Mercury News.
Kaz was grilled for his previous statements about Sony,s dominance in the game console market and that “the next generation doesn,t start until we start it.” In saying so, dismissed the Xbox 360 and the soon-to-be-released Nintendo Wii from the next-gen console race. Hirai defended his position by referring to the history of Sony,s position in the game console releases.
“It’s been that way for three console generations. History has a way of proving the forward-looking things that we say. With our original PlayStation, we ushered in the era of the CD-ROM and 3D. With the PlayStation 2, we correctly said that the next-generation starts with PS2, not Dreamcast. With the PlayStation 3, we are keeping to our belief that we have the true next-generation console. It’s all about the games. We all know that. It’s about delivering compelling entertainment to the consumer once again. We are well on our way to showing that. We are in a very compelling position. I’m confident we will stay in the lead.”
Hirai then addressed the price points of the PS3 and offered his take on all of the static. “This console is going to do much more. We have made sure this is a console for the long haul. If you look at the lack of Blu-ray on Microsoft, what do you do if the game requires 40 to 50 gigabytes? Put it on three disks? Let’s look under the hood and see total value we are delivering to consumers. At five to 10 years, you see the lasting power of the PS2. If you go out there now, there is a lot of PS2 software out there. From a consumer’s view, who got the better value? If you look at which console is giving the publishers more time to amortize their development costs, the answer is pretty obvious.”
“It comes down not to what you offer in terms of the console itself. It comes down to what you run on the console. Is it attractive or not? That doesn’t change with any generation of console. Blu-ray and taking advantage of it is going to be important.”
Hirai,s answer for the high price of the PS3 is logical and applicable to business theory, but what may be missing from the equation is the gut reaction of the common consumer. The gaming public doesn,t necessarily look at the long term benefits of buying a game console as much as the immediate price point of the machine. In the case of the PS3, no one is stating that it is a bargain.
