Speaking with the Guardian, SCEE boss David Reeves likens the situation to getting pummelled in a boxing match - interesting.
He affirms they’re still confident in forecasts and are ”still profitable” with ”a lot of fight in us,” proving he loves this boxing metaphor. Reeves plans to secure profit in Europe by March.
”We simply have to suffer a little,” he explained to the Guardian, ”go down in market share and mind-share. It’s like Ali v Foreman - go eight or nine rounds and let him punch himself out. We’re still standing, we’re still profitable and there’s a lot of fight in us. I don’t say we will land a knockout blow, but we’re there and we’re fighting.”
Sony has reported the first major loss in 14 years for the company; they expect to bled 150bn Yen ($1.7bn, £1.2bn) by the end of this fiscal.
”My objective is financial - to make a profit in our territory by the end of March, and we will. Our priority has always been the PS3; the forecast was 10m at the beginning of the year and it’s still 10m.”
Sony has heavily resisted the notion of cutting price on their next-gen console, and has in fact launched a bigger and more expensive model. Rumours of a price cut escaped a Sony employee conference a while back and were quickly shutdown by executives.
”If we’d cut the price, lost another billion dollars, we might have had a huge Christmas but it would have been followed by a huge loss. The company could have thought: ‘Hmm, I’m not sure I want to be in this business at all.’ But we’ve shown Sony this is still a good business to have,” Reeves explains.
With the PS3 in third place behind Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii, why does Sony feel compelled to keep the price high? ”How do I justify it? Look at the capability of the machines. With PS3, you can go online for free, it’s got all the games you want, it’s got a Blu-ray drive so you don’t need a new player, you can store photos on it, and you’ve got Home.”
While Sony may feel the PS3 has ”all the games you want” many consumers disagree, and are yet to be convinced the console is worth the high investment price compared with what you can get out of Microsoft or Nintendo’s bundles.
”Admittedly, in the current climate, more people will go for the lower price, but we still make a profit and that is our objective,” he added.
