One year after the official launch of its new generation gaming
console in US and Japan,
Sony made today a new attempt to encourage game studios and designers to create
games for its platform.
The Japanese company has cut the price of PlayStation 3’s
SDK (software development kit)
The new prices are $10,250 in North America, 950,000 yens ($8,600)
in Japan and 7,500 euro ($11,250)
in Europe.
Sony is also rolling out new software development features,
debugging tools, and support for applications such as ProDG and its SN tool
suite.
As its PlayStations 3 is so far the great looser of the
gaming consoles battle, for Sony is crucial to improve the sales. So far, Sony
had sold 5.6 million PS3s world-wide, and its console is lagging far behind the
main competitors, Microsoft and Nintendo.
In the same time frame Nintendo has sold 13,2 million Nintendo
Wiis and according to the estimations the company hopes to sell 17.5 million units by the end of this fiscal
year, on March 31, 2008.
PlayStation 3’s price was heavily criticized by analysts and
gamers alike, even from the moment it was announced for the first time. But
Sony argued that the price is fully justified, because PlayStation 3 is also a
media entertainment hub due to its BluRay drive.
Earlier this month Sony decided to address the problem. The company
has launched a new PlayStation 3 model with a 40-gigabyte hard drive for $399,
compared with an earlier entry-level price of $499 on a model with 60 gigabytes
of storage capacity.
According to Sony’s CEO, Howard Stringer the company is
already seeing strong sales momentum as a result - PS3 sales have increased by
192 percent at the top 10 retailers in North America.
Also, for the first time since its official launch in Japan (in November last year) PS3 surpassed
with Wii 55,924 PS3 machines sold vs. 34,546 Wiis.
SCEA also recently launched a new PS3 advertising campaign,
the company's biggest marketing effort to date, designed to deliver a high-energy
message with a focus on the exciting entertainment value of PS3 and exclusive
content found only on PS3. The lineup of advertisements will feature some of
SCEA's most highly anticipated first party titles.
Still, Sony has another problem. The lack of games was often
quoted by analysts as one of the reason behind PS3’s poor financial performance.
But Sony is trying hard to solve the problem. Since the launch of PlayStation 3
more than 200 titles were launched, but the company is still missing that CULT game
which is capable to do for Sony what Halo franchise did for Microsoft. Maybe
they will have more luck from now on.
