Wii prices going up

[cHodAX]

Just read this, another sign the UK is going down the shitter...

Consumers to be hit by Wii price rise // News

PS3 and 360 next?

 

[Raven]

It would be corporate suicide for Sony to put the price up of the PS3, its already about 150% of the price that it should be. Wii on the other hand is bought by idiots anyway so it probably doesn't matter how much they charge for it, it would still sell out.

 

[leviathane]

Wii mebbe brought by idiots but the 360 ppl pay £40 for a game so can't really see the 360 raising in price when the games make so much money for them.

 

[megadave]

All ive heard from the ps3 is price is going down, cant see them raising it atleast oO

 

[leviathane]

would kill them if they raised the ps3 prices tbh, ppl still waiting for the price of it to drop enough so they can buy it.

 

[soze]

All the talk is off the PS3 going down. It will always cost more than the 360 so if you want one live with it and pay if you dont really want one they will never be cheap enough. Bloody xbox fan bois bitching about price! :kissit:

 

[cHodAX]

All the talk is off the PS3 going down. It will always cost more than the 360 so if you want one live with it and pay if you dont really want one they will never be cheap enough. Bloody xbox fan bois bitching about price! :kissit:

Be interesting to see if the PS3 does drop in price, with the currency market the way it is Sony would be taking a massive loss by cutting the console to £199 as rumoured. As much as they need the PS3 to suceed I don't see how cutting revenue further in a time of economic crisis is serving the best interests of the shareholders. A small price cut would be the answer and another small cut coming up to Christmas but £80 right off the bat is very risky.

On another note, the NPD data is in and 360 trounced the PS3 yet again selling almost 50% more units in February.

 

[cHodAX]

Scratch that...

SCEA - We have NO immediate plans to drop the price of the PS3 system | VG Chartz.com - Video Game Sales Charts, News, Reviews, Cheats, Forums - Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Wii, PS3, Xbox360, DS, PSP, PC

Looks my staggered price drop idea was close to the mark.

 

[Yaka]

stupid tbh. they slash price theyd shift more. which means more peeps either buying games or blurays.

 

[cHodAX]

stupid tbh. they slash price theyd shift more. which means more peeps either buying games or blurays.

You are completely right ofc but the timing is key and right now Sony cannot absorb another massive hit to profits. Better to stagger it and have it down to £199 for the Christmas period where it will help them shift alot of extra units.

 

[Wij]

But PS3 is dying on its arse. Maybe worth a big-arse loan to try to ensure they still have a console business ?

 

[Yaka]

wouldnt say dying i dont think its any where near to the way sega fucked things up with the saturn or dreamcast and ninty with the n64 , just in usa and parts of europe its behind the 360.

it would be dying if preety much every western dev was not doing games multiplatform and were just making games for one console it would be for the 360

 

[WPKenny]

I've just picked up a PS3 and I'm pretty impressed with it.
The only gripe I have with it so far is the lack of multi region on it. I never thought it would be a problem before I bought it since most players out there have a simple remote hack but it's a bit of a PITA cos I have so many different region DVD's. Will have to keep my old DVD player still hooked up to the telly for now.

 

[Yaka]

u could always back up the dvds with no region codeing. it is bit shit tho

 

[Chilly]

or rip/stream from media server. but yeh, bit natty. You can dual boot it into linux tho and then the region is irellivant.

 

[Ctuchik]

sony is in a bit of a ball ache tho when it comes to cutting prices on the ps3. i read somewhere that they are just barely making ANY profit as it is now when it comes to sale to sale on their consoles. wich is mostly due to the incredibly expensive tech they use in them.

dropping the prices means a guaranteed loss up until the tech they use goes down in price aswell. and even then that means that they will probably never get back the cash they lost on the previously sold units.

sure i guess having "most advanced console ever" as a sales argument is good in some way, but it really rolls over and rapes them when stuff like this happens.

have a feeling that sony will end up having to write off the ps3 as a more or less complete loss in the end just to get their units out on the market.

because they sure as hell wont compete with the 360 with these prices.

 

[nath]

I was under the impression that consoles are always sold at a pretty significant loss, the intention being the revenue is made up by the software sales.

 

[cHodAX]

I was under the impression that consoles are always sold at a pretty significant loss, the intention being the revenue is made up by the software sales.

For the first 3 years that is generally the case, after that small profit margains begin to kick in from die shrinks to silicon and reduced component costs. That is why after a 3-4 year period you sometimes end up with smaller, lighter consoles that consume less power ala PSone and PStwo.

 

[Sparx]

thats what MS are doing. I just bought a new xbox, my other one finally died pretty good going considering how long i had it. The new one is so much quieter than the old model

 

[Yaka]

thats not what ms are doing. your new silent box is mainly due the huge fuck up ms created for its self in the rrod fiasco. tho ms did look at alowing other companies to make 360 as they saw fit i.e hd-dvd built in with a diff formfactor case but nowt came of it mainly due to hd-dvd dying.

 

[cHodAX]

Actually that is exactly what Microsoft is doing. They die shrunk the CPU down from 90nm to 65nm followed by the GPU to the same specs. That has lowered the power requirement by 75watts. This die shrink was always planned, mainly to reduce cost and power, RRoD just forced a re-evalutation of the timescale. In 2010 the CPU and GPU may well transition to 40nm which will dramatically slash the build price of the 360 and could well push the price sub £100 as well as integrating the powersupply into the case.

 

[Chilly]

Why will a process shrink decrease unit price? The fabs for newer 40nm process cost vast amounts of money. Obviously power and space within the cahssis will go down but that's a marginal effect on cost.

 

[Lethul]

Why will a process shrink decrease unit price? The fabs for newer 40nm process cost vast amounts of money. Obviously power and space within the cahssis will go down but that's a marginal effect on cost.

I wonder this myself Enlighten me!

 

[Yaka]

so true chilly. and if they go down that route amd/ati will have to a hit and cover the cost of the gpu as well.

 

[cHodAX]

The physical size of the CPU/GPU is alot smaller, that means alot more chips per wafer which in turn gives a large cost decrease per unit.

 

[cHodAX]

Why will a process shrink decrease unit price? The fabs for newer 40nm process cost vast amounts of money. Obviously power and space within the cahssis will go down but that's a marginal effect on cost.

Ok, so here is how it goes. The chip fabrication plants are not owned by Microsoft, the cost of implementing 40nm process is spread between many many customers and those costs are recovered on a per unit basis that is integrated into the profit margains. So, Microsoft do not directly pay for the costs of developing 40nm process but they pay indirectly. The thing is, on a 65nm process you might be looking at 80 CPU's per 300mm wafer but those same CPU's fabbed at 40nm on the same sized wafer will deliver roughly 120+ CPU's. So, we have an much increased yield at a slightly increased price per unit. The thing is Microsoft isn't buying a single CPU it is buying millions of them so the economies of scale kick in and they are actually saving money.

Now here comes the next part, a smaller CPU or GPU will consume less power. That means you can get away with a cheaper power solution, thus a smaller power supply that is cheaper to build, a cheaper cooling system and alot less capacitors on the motherboard. It is all money and each small component taken out adds up quickly. That is why die shrinks are always a great thing for console manufacturers, it lowers the build cost thus making it more profitable to sell and also gives you the option of slashing margains as Microsoft have done.

Think about it this way, they could not have sold a Premium SKU built on the old 90nm process for much less than £200. The power supply was expensive and heavy, the motherboard was loaded with capacitors and the GPU/CPU dissapated a shit load of heat so they needed a big cooling solution (sadly even that wasn't good enough). All those extra parts cost alot of money and the 90nm die process deliver alot less chips per wafer.