Sony are dropping the price of the PS2 in North America, and across all of Europe, except for the UK.
I'm sure very few people actually care about a PS2 pricedrop at this stage, but since A) there is no backwards compatible PS3 available in the UK, and B) PS2s do break, especially older models, it would certainly be nice for them to be cheaper.
No reason for them not dropping the price here has been given, so here is a fictitious response from an imaginary Sony spokesperson.
"The recent international price drop for the PS2 console gives consumers an excellent value proposition, there are nearly 1,900 titles available for the system, and new games keep coming out regularly. We decided not to drop the price in the UK, because we realised that we could get a lot more money by not doing, and we really like money, so we want as much of it as possible.
Luckily, the vast majority of UK consumers will not know that they are being charged more than pretty much everyone else around the world, so people will keep happily buying them."
Funnily enough, it's actually the PS3 that is overpriced right now, but there is no word on a price drop for that either.
If and when they do decide to drop either the PS2 or PS3 price here, I will let you know.
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5 comments:
Well, I expect it to have something to do with the low value of the UK pound, compared to the Euro and US dollar (although that isn't doing too well at the moment either). Just like Nintendo is actually contemplating raising the price of the Wii, and why the DSi is so expensive compared to the Lite.
Also, currently the UK consoles are about one third cheaper than in the Scandinavian countries, where I live, so at the moment Sony/MS/Nintendo are making far less on game systems sold to the Brits already.
Thats all well and good, but what about when the pound was stronger than the dollar and euro. We didnt see our price come into line with them launch ps2 price in NA $300 uk £300 in november 2000 as of launch 300$ was £214 so they got an extra £86 per uk unit and the same was also true of games as well.
Also, Microsoft seem perfectly capable of dropping the price of their consoles here.
Has Sony even released the 'new' slim PS2 (With the built-in power brick)?
So not does America/Europe get a price cut but also it's on the newer hardware, whereas we're stuck paying premium pricing on old hardware.
I am not really trying to defend anyone, least of all Sony. I mean, you can get a 360 Arcade for just £30 more, so I am surprised that it apparently sell well enough in the UK not to warrent a price reduction. And Ninty is just as bad with the DSi and Wii pricing, so I was merely pointing out that Sony are not alone in their UK price gouging.
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