The PS3 price drop is a bad sign, but it’s not a Sony endorsed one. It’s just from one Japanese discount store. The fact that they are putting them on sale like that does indicate that they have way more stock than they hope to sell, though, and it means reorders from that retailer are going to be effectively nothing.
It’s a bad sign, but no worse than all of the other ones that are already there. When more retailers start closing out and refusing to reorder then the PS3 is as dead as the NGage, but I’m not willing to just call it with one.
Go forth and find me a price quote on a Wii and a PS3. Not bundles, just the base system. And from a retailer, not some dude selling it on eBay or craigslist or whatever.
That’s just nitpicking. I bought my Wii two days ago for MSRP*. Yes, if I had been impatient I could have gone on eBay and paid more, but in two months when supply has caught up with demand no one is going to be paying over $250 for a Wii. But they’ll still be paying $600 for the PS3.
*Full disclosure: I did wait in line for three hours.
Steve Jobs can sell overpriced and underpowered products only to a degree – remember the Cube? And I don’t recall Jobs ever trying to justify that with a cavalier “just go get a second job” attitude, either.
Some might also say the iPhone is another such dud, but since they’re only targeting 1% of the cell phone marketplace to start, I don’t think they’re being unrealistic. Time will tell…
I must’ve inadvertently visited MSRP land when I got my Wii in December, then, as the receipt clearly shows $250 + tax. Wal-Mart’s bundle is a bad joke, but I don’t expect anything better from them anyway.
Emphasis mine.
That’s a pretty silly restriction. I can find lots and lots of price quotes for the Wii at $250. The thing is, all those retailers who claim to sell it for $250 don’t have any. If you think that a posted price for an item someone doesn’t have to sell is a valid representation of what that item costs, I’ve got a bridge you might be interested in.
Everyone I know who has a Wii either
Got lucky. Nothing wrong with that, except lots of people haven’t and it’s not a valid way of determining the actual price. The price of a $5 lottery scratcher win isn’t $1 just because you get lucky every once in a while.
Called stores every day, waited for hours in line somewhere, sometimes multiples times. How much is your time worth?
Paid extra to buy it on eBay or some other such site.
I don’t think so. My point is, it’s possible to get a Wii for $250, although you may have to do some extra work to do so. No one anywhere is selling a PS3 for $250, unless they’re feeling charitable or something.
I’ll sell you a PS3 for $250. Hell, you got a nice face: $200.
I don’t have any, of course. How is that different than all the retailers who claim to sell Wiis for $250 and don’t have any.
Given that at least one store has already started marking PS3s down from the MSRP, and Wiis continue to go for $300+ on eBay, I stand by my statement that Wiis do not cost half as much as PS3s.
If they’re selling them for $250, and they don’t have any left, then somebody has been buying them for $250.
Well, one difference is that you’re probably not going to be getting any PS3s in any time soon, and if you did, you probably wouldn’t actually be willing to sell it for $200. The retailers, on the other hand, will be getting more Wiis, and they will be selling them for $250.
Your logic doesn’t make any sense. I got a Wii for Christmas from my mom. I didn’t pay a dime for it. That doesn’t mean Wiis are free.
I’m saying that the market price of a Wii is more than half the market price of a PS3. I’m surprised there’s so much contention on this point.
That Wii you got for Christmas could be sold for $300+. If it broke, and you had to buy a new one, the price to get one would be $300+. Except for special circumstances or lots of extra effort on your part, a Wii costs more than $300.
You’re also saying a Wii is worth $300. That’s got to make Nintendo happy, even if they aren’t seeing that extra profit from eBay. Hm, maybe Nintendo should start selling off eBay. Maybe they could sell a Blu-Ray HD-DVD add-on player for $300.
I believe that same was true for the PS3 when it was in short supply right after it was released. Most of my friends have a Wii and guess what, they paid $250 +tax for them. I don’t have one yet, but when I get one I’ll pay $250 +tax for it and I won’t be standing line or doing any extra effort to get it. I’ll get one when I walk into the store and they have one on the shelf, like all the PS3s that haven’t sold (the local target has 3 PS3s that have been on the shelf for almost a month).
iamthewalrus(:3= I’m not saying you’re wrong, just fighting a losing argument.
I think it’d be nice if all the sellers of low supply high demand items would just auction them off. Everyone whines about scalpers, but no one seems to want to confront the economic reality that if you sell things below the market value, there’ll be shortages and middlemen making bank. Think how much better off we’d be if all the people who waited in line for hours or drove around to a dozen stores had been at work, or school, or at play instead, and the machines had just been auctioned off.
If it were announced at $300 and they’d been in stores, I’d have bought one. But knowing that it’ll come down at least to the announced price, I’m waiting.
This is not like selling commodities in Trading Places. It looks bad and discourages buyers when you change the RRP frequently. They have to weigh the customer distress caused by initial price imbalance, 3am queues, eBay “scalping”, and all that, against the lost sales caused by simply setting the long- or medium-term price too high.