Ben-DutkaVideo game hardware prices are the lowest they've been all generation – of course, they can really only go in one direction – but one publisher still wants to see 'em go cheaper.
Activision Blizzard was one of the publishers who pushed hard for a price drop around this time last year; they were especially concerned with the PlayStation 3. Well, Sony gave the PS3 its $100 price cut last fall and since then, sales have been soaring. However, according to MCVUK , Activision believes that in order for the industry to continue to grow, we're going to need another round of hardware price cuts. Speaking during the company's conference call, president Michael Morhaine cites the current economic condition: "If you look at consoles, I think you are going to need to see hardware price declines given the economic uncertainties that we have," he said. He also recommended to other game makers that they should work with the upcoming motion controllers for both Sony and Microsoft, because that kind of innovation is always crucial. Said Morhaine:
"You are going to need to see product innovations. And as you look at some of the new user interfaces that are coming out, I think those are certainly going to deliver some interesting product innovation."
Then he mentioned digital distribution, which "offers higher margin opportunities" and that "natural growth will occur naturally from expanding demographics." This is all well and good, but calling for another round of console price cuts might be jumping the gun; we just had some price drops late last year. But hey, I guess cheaper is always better, provided we get the same experience.
sorry… just felt that was very important…
Its defently not a price cut for hardware that is needed, all 3 consoles are at great prices. Activision charges way to much for their games and then ontop of that charges DLC that could of been in the game or music that could be way cheaper for DLC. Before they say the HW needs a price cut they need to look at their own prices before commenting on Hardware prices. Greedy Greedy.
I would like to see the actual Video Games go down in cost, only I fear that would be a bad thing. If the Video Games were less money, then we would likely end up seeing games with less content attached and more DLC releases.
neither of them i want, and more importantly neither of them will happen soon.
price cut?
are you serious?
for their games?
cant see that happening, till bobby gets fired as CEO.
motion controllers?
well as i said yesterday can you imagine playing dantes inferno only by motion?
your arm would be dead in 2 minutes.
DD?
no, just no.
it took me 6 hours to download the heavy rain demo which was 1.8GBs if memory serves me.
ok so if it takes 6 hours to download under 2GBs of data, imagine how long it would take to download a full ps3 game which are normally 20-25GBs.
or MGS4 which is a full 50GBs.
hmmmmmmmmmmm, hard decision!
go to the store and buy the game and be back in the space of 20 minutes.
or spend 1 day downloading it.
hmmmmmmmmm, decisions, decisions!
closest were going to get to DD for a long time is onlive.
but i have heard some very bad things about it, allot of people are experiencing lots of lag and other issues.
not to mention ive heard 1 hour of gameplay uses up 2GBs of bandwidth.
12.5 hours of gameplay and thats it my download usage is gone!
no surfing the web, no downloading music, programs, videos.
no thanks! i think ill stick to my optical drive.
I think even though they're a big studio, activision is losing it's clout to influence consoles.
Activision in particular need new IP.
They need to concentrate on their own affairs, rather than trying to increase sales by making the harware cheaper.
They're getting stale and the gaming community recognises it.
This coming from the guys who say games should be more than 60 dollars. I think games need price cuts in uncertain economic times.
I have to assume his motives for wanting consoles to drop in price is more sales for Activision. Maybe he should take a look in the mirror, drop game prices $10 and he'll see an uptick in sales. Drop his accessory prices and he'll see a sales increase. Spend some more time on the PS3 version of games instead of porting it over and maybe they'd see more PS3 sales.
The current console prices got his company the highest sales its ever seen, sounds like the prices were right to me.
I really don't think Sony needs to drop the PS3's price, they still need to make money on the thing, it dropped 100 bucks a couple of months ago, why make another price cut this soon, the sales still have momentum anyway and with the upcoming exclusives those sales will probably ascend.
And as WorldEndsWithMe said, the prices of multiplats should go down, since they are mostly inferior to the exclusives. I really don't mind paying 60 bucks for an exclusive, since I know I'll be satisfied, though with multiplats, I don't.
I gotta say i agree with Ben that even though some of us might not like activision, they still are one of the highest selling game makers out there. Although after some of my recent purchases from them i'm a hairs breath from vowing to never buy another activision game ever again. Last couple of games i bought from them were a rip off with only a sampling of what the games should have been. Along with their demands to sony to lower the ps3 price, which was ridiculous, they have been throwing gamestop all kinds of ridiculous presale deals and then backing out of said deals at the last minute in order to get lots of preorders without actually providing the promised incentive. Activision is a power hungry gaming company who thinks they are the god of the gaming world, strike them down, stop buying their games. Of all the nerve, they might as well tell ferrari that they have to sell their cars for the same price as a chevy cavalier. Activision is always making ridiculous claims and demands and i for one am sick of them.