Just recently, Fergal Gara (Managing Director, Sony UK), discussed the PlayStation 4 in detail with GamesIndustry International.
When it came to the consoles’s pricing, the MD said that the matter had to be considered for almost seven years, and the company actually put a lot of effort into finalizing it. The price wasn’t just decided without much thought.
“Quite simply we don’t want to over promise and under deliver. We’re not in mass manufacture right now so it’s impossible to be absolutely precise,” said Gara. “I’m confident we’ll have very significant stocks for the UK and absolutely delighted we’re going to launch before Christmas.”
The company also had to ensure that the next-generation console will be profitable, and not take the kind of losses the previous console suffered, because of the pricing.
“There’s no point in looking at the console in isolation,” he said. “Is PlayStation going to be a profitable business? It needs to be and it intends to be a profitable business over the next year.”
“The balance of everything we do, whether that’s the console, the software, the accessories or the digital business, it all needs to be profitable and we expect it to be profitable in the short term and the medium term.” Hopefully Sony’s learned from it’s past mistakes, and won’t repeat them this time.