Thu, Feb 05, 2009 | 08:05 GMT
Reeves: Sony has to suffer, go down in market share
Sony must simply take some pain with PS3, SCEE boss David Reeves has told the Guardian, but no matter how bad the fight is at the moment for the machine, the firm’s still “fighting”.
“We simply have to suffer a little,” he said, “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.”
Reeves was speaking after the release of dour PlayStation family sales figures for last year, in which both hardware and software sales declined against 2007.
“My objective is financial – to make a profit in our territory by the end of March, and we will,” Reeves added.
“Our priority has always been the PS3; the forecast was 10 million at the beginning of the year and it’s still 10 million. 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.”
There’s loads more through there. Well worth a read.
12 comments
#1
Blerk
05/02/09, 8:22 am
Did he really just say that they were ‘still profitable’?
#2
Retroid
05/02/09, 8:36 am
I was going to post an “Orly?” to that too!
#3
Retroid
05/02/09, 8:36 am
I was going to post an “Orly?” to that too!
#4
Retroid
05/02/09, 8:36 am
Gah, fecking mouse >:(
#5
Robo_1
05/02/09, 8:39 am
I think he’s talking about SCEE, not SCE or even Sony as a whole.
I thought the most interesting bit of news in that interview, was confirmation that the Cell chip is going to shift to a 45nm process in the middle of the year, which is more than likely what the next price cut is dependent on.
#6
tenthousandgothsonacid
05/02/09, 8:54 am
Downloadable movies in pal territories was mentioned too, I thought they’d forgotten about us.
If they price that right they’d clean up, I’m sick of rental by post.
#7
G1GAHURTZ
05/02/09, 9:39 am
The PS3 is doomed.
Blu-Ray is sucking the life out of it like a giant spider eating a big fat fly.
How can a price drop lose you a billion dollars??
Plus, the problem with his logic is that it’s all short term.
They may make a profit this year, with a relatively small install base, but in the future, that small install base is going to hurt them when other platforms take all of the exclusives, and most of the new customers.
#8
SilentLoner
05/02/09, 10:01 am
I still feel sorry for sony as their machine is a much better beast than the 360 imo.
I still cant get over how well the 360 is selling even when they break people just buy another :O
#9
Truk
05/02/09, 10:22 am
It’s not really that much of a smaller install base, is it? Compared to the Wii, yes, but compared to the 360 it’s about 2/3 of the amount.
I’d wager that exclusives on the 360 will in the future actually be more sparse than on the PS3, because (a) Sony has *much* larger internal game development capability than Microsoft and (b) third party publishers aren’t going to want to go single platform unless they get serious wodges of cash, especially when money’s getting tight. Now, if MS pay that cash, then I’d guess it could be about even.
Anyway, I was under the impression that the ratio of console exclusives on each platform was roughly even anyway?
#10
SplatteredHouse
05/02/09, 11:06 am
ttga wrote: ‘Downloadable movies in pal territories was mentioned too, I thought they’d forgotten about us.’
There was a big slide shown at last GC. It showed that music videos were coming first, followed by the movie download service, to PSN. Nothing’s been forgotten, and the movie service wasn’t scheduled to be available until Q3 anyway!
#11
Retroid
05/02/09, 12:31 pm
@SilentLoner:
I’ve said in the past that the PS3 is a better example of ‘livingroom technology’ than the 360, that much is obvious. But the internal differences are for little considering how development has gone for it with only a few games to show what it can do.
As for failure rates… you’re aware those problems were largely addressed nearly a year and a half ago, right? Not to mention the replacement of faulty motherboards with the fixes incorporated.
#12
mightyhokie
05/02/09, 3:15 pm
But sir, Ali was very prepared for that fight and had a great fight plan. He didn’t just brag then run around the ring telling everyone every time he got hit that he was okay. *Punch* ‘Im doing well’ *crack* ‘im winning’ *slap* ‘im still gonna win’.
It just seems to me that Sony is living in another world…
@Retroid
“I’ve said in the past that the PS3 is a better example of ‘livingroom technology’ than the 360, that much is obvious.”
Its not obvious to me. I have both, yet I use the 360 about 20x more than the PS3. I used to use the PS3 more to watch Blu-Ray and still do, but most of the non-gaming stuff is watching movies on Netflix or streaming music off of my computer. I find (now that the new nav is on the 360) that I am using that a lot more for the non-gaming stuff. As for gaming, well I use the 360 about 99.9% of the time. I know I’m just one person, but I don’t agree that it is ‘obvious’ that the PS3 is a better ‘livingroom tech’. Sorry.