PSP Go: UK games retailers remain uncertain about stocking the handheld

“[Potential] first adopters are on the phone within seconds of it being announced and you’ve got your pre-orders. I don’t have a single pre-order for PSP Go at the moment.”

That’s because they saw the price.

What price?

It doesn’t have one in the UK yet….an official one at least.

Under £200 and Sony *could* be onto something; over £200 and it’ll tank.

It’s probably because there’s no official price as to why people are not pre-ordering and are just waiting.

The US / Euro prices are enough to know. It’s not like we don’t have prior experience of how they usually convert.

True, but £200 is a bit of a magic figure…£199 and Sony might get away with it, and I don’t think that would be too bad.

The PS3 is £280 odd; you can’t price the PSPgo at £249 or something…it would look stupid having the Go and PS3 so close in price.

“The PS3 is £280 odd; you can’t price the PSPgo at £249 or something…it would look stupid having the Go and PS3 so close in price.”

Since when have Sony not been stupid when it comes to UK pricing…

Stupidity in this area is one of Sony’s trademarks.

Uncertainty over the cost and some e-tailers listing it around the £230 mark is probably more a factor than customer apathy.

I’d be interested if it costs close to the current PSP cost, which is about £100 less than what the PSP Go might cost.

It’ll be interesting to see how they even convince shops to carry it, given that they won’t be able to sell any software to go along with it.

I think Blerk has the right idea, why stock a device designed to cut you out of the market? Retailers usually make very little on the hardware anyway so why should they bother wasting shelf space with something that won’t make them money short term or long term? I think that’s what the retailers are really saying here.

Maybe the stupidly high price on the device is so Sony can offer retailers a much larger profit margin to give them the incentive to stock it?

Waterstones sell the Sony eReader which – as said above – is similarly a device designed to cut traditional retailers out the market.

By coincidence, or otherwise, it’s also going for a stupidly high price – £199!

The Sony eReader and likely the PSP-Go will have retailer margins built into the RRP, more so than traditional consoles which are very low margin. I think that’s part of the high price but not all of it. Besides, retailers will likely do accessory bundles to go along with it which they’ll make a mint out of.

There’s no way it’ll be under £200 here though.

There’s another reason, besides the steep price for what amounts to a revised product (instead of an entirely new one) that would put retail off:

They’re not going to get any repeat custom from selling the machine.

They can’t bundle it with games, because it won’t run them. If a punter comes in, desperate for a PSP, they’re going to want to sell them a UMD-based one. Pimp some games and get the customer to return to their store again and again.

With the PSP Go, they’d only be selling a machine and nothing else. No point selling games or store-branded loyalty points with it. All sales of PSP Go games after that will circumvent the retailer entirely. Why would a retailer endorse a process that will effectively stunt their revenue in that area?

Perhaps Sony should sort out the PSN Card stuff out so that retailers can, at the very least, sell ‘credit’ to be used on the PSN – that would eke out a bit of revenue for the retail sector in respect of the PSP Go.

The adoption of digital distribution is bad news for traditonal retailers. Although their short-term attitude in respect of things like used-game sales has done much to encourage the industry’s development in this area, I can’t imagine any games retailer fully embracing a digital-delivery machine.

The doomsday clock is starting to tick for retail.