Is this a tale of two faces?
By Wily Ferret at The Inquirer.
This week is all about the gaming, as the E3 convention kicks off in Los Angeles and Sony has delivered the news early, announcing a $100 price cut for the PS3 in north America.
The confirmation of the cut, rumored on gaming websites for the last few days, comes hot on the heels of a straight up denial from Sony that the price cut would take place. On Friday, Sony President Ryoji Chubachi told reporters that there were “no immediate plans” to reduce the PS3 price point.
Chubachi must have a fairly narrow definition of immediate, as Sony’s Dave Karraker confirmed a price cut on Sunday.
The 60GB console will go from $599 to $499, whilst a new 80GB console will appear at $599, bundled with Motorstorm.
Sony says that the larger hard drive will eventually facilitate movie downloading, but the capacity falls short of the Xbox 360 Elite 120GB hard drive, which already offers movie and TV downloads through Xbox Live.
It’s tough for Sony to maintain respect amongst the press, and the gaming public, when they flat out deny a story until the second they put out the press release. Intel used to do a similar thing, and that just bought them the ire of the enthusiasts, a community they’ve had to work hard to woo back. Is Sony making the same close minded mistake?