Reeves: There will be no PS3 price cut this year

SCEE president David Reeves has told VG247 that PlayStation 3 hardware will see no price cut in 2008, and that he believes price is less of a contributing factor to success than good software.

"There is no price cut," he said.

When press on specifically on whether or not there would be a PS3 price cut in 2008, Reeves replied simply, "No," adding, "We're not going to drop the price this year."

The Sony exec was speaking at Games Convention in Germany yesterday, following a spectacular press conference heavy with announcements for both Europe and the rest of the world.

Games were still the driving factor behind hardware sales for SCEE, more so than pricing, he told us.

"Yes, absolutely," he said if he believed software was the deciding element to PS3's success in Europe.

"And I think it's the games for Nintendo; I think whatever price they're at, I think it's the games that have really, really driven it.

"We started off at the beginning of the year with GT5 Prologue, then we went to GTA IV, then Metal Gear Solid. There'll be LittleBigPlanet, and then we move onto PES and FIFA and all those.

"We're on rails, and I think that those games are going to drive it."

Reeves said that focus testing had shown console pricing was not as important to youth consumers as games and features.

"When you do focus groups with people, whether it's in the UK or not, it's amazing that - not necessarily children, but an 11 or 12 year-old boy - has in his mind... that he wants a PS3 because of this game or because of this particular feature.

"He doesn't really think of the price because he doesn't really have any perception of it. But, he'll say to his parents, 'I want a PS3.'

"If he wants a new bike, and he gets an old back, he's not going to be very happy. Children don't think about the price so much. The press think about the price: it's got to come down."

Despite the lack of a cost drop at Leipzig, said Reeves, the firm had announced plenty to pump up the value of the PS3 proposition this year.

"We have not announced a price drop, but we have got an 80Gb [SKU] instead of a 40Gb [SKU] - now that's interesting - and there's going to be twice as many games, and there is a 160Gb [SKU] with 70 euros of downloadable content," he said.

"So we think that we're keeping that value there. The former boss of Sony Computer Entertainment was Terry Tokunaka and he'd answer the question of, 'Will there be a price cut?' with, 'I'm not saying in the long term future we're not going to drop the price.'

"What I'm saying is that we're not going to drop the price this year."

For our live coverage of the announcements made during the Sony conference on Wednesday, hit this.