PSPgo price already slashed

October 6, 2009 10:00 am

Categories: Gaming News Tags: PSPgo, Sony

It’s taken less than a week, but UK online gadget purveyors have already slashed the cost of the PSPgo, dropping the slick new slider from £225 to £199. Now that sub 200 nicker tag has woken you up, read on and we’ll tell you where you can furnish yourself with one.

Amazon, Play, HMV and GAME have all abandoned Sony’s somewhat hefty RRP for the PSPgo. The move comes 7 days after the new fangled version of Sony’s handheld hub hit the streets.

In the wake of E3, punters had been told the PSPgo would start at £249, mirroring the dollar price for our tech loving pals across the pond. So such a significant drop at this stage is a surprise.

PSPgo: 16,000 downloadable extras from day one

The question remains, why have these big players decided now is the time for a price cut? Is the PSPgo really doing that badly? We won’t know until official figures emerge in the next few months, but with UMD gone and the lack of a capacious hard drive, don’t be surprised if things haven’t gone as swimmingly as planned for Sony.

Out now | £199 | Sony (via Joystiq)

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Mark

This is just pure media Sony hate nonsense. Please grow up and start doing responsible reporting, rather than the gutter tech reporting you are falling into.

I don’t know ANYONE that bought a PSPGo for the RRP for 225. Everyone got them for £199, it was always the way. Infact you could have got the PSP go from Game or Argos for as low as £179 at some points.

With the lack of UMD, and thus lack of retail software sales, the PSP cannot be a lossleader for software sales, so the retailer market margin is very high on the Go (compared to the peanuts retailers get for the PSP2000/PSP3000). Retailers have decided they are willing to sacrifice some of that profit and sell more units. It’s got nothing to do with sales or desperation.

You post shows you know nothing about technology, retail or much else to be honest, and are happy to copy and paste any old crap you read on the net without actually understanding what you write.

http://www.electricpig.co.uk Joe Minihane

Hi Mark

Thanks for your comment. As I’ve said before, we don’t hate Sony, see our 5 star review of the PS3 Slim and stacks of glowing coverage about the PSPgo

Here we are simply reporting the fact that there has been a price drop. There are questions raised by this: as you say, no one you know bought a PSPgo for £225. The question is, why has the price dropped so quickly? It’ll be interesting to see the sales figures. This isn’t Sony hate. We’d do the same for Nintendo, Microsoft and any other gadget manufacturer.

There’s a lot of interest in this and it’s great that you’re keen to air your views, keep them coming.

Cheers

Joe

Stephen. E

It’s still too pricey. £50 less than a fully-fledged Blu-ray playing PS3. That’s Insania (to coin a Peter Andre song, which bizarrely popped into my brainbox).

Mark

Is it REALLY too pricey?

A PSP3000 is £140 (and comes with 1GB Memory Stick). The PSP GO comes with 16GB. A 16GB Memory Stick is £60. There is your £200 price right there, ignorging the better screen of the PSPGo, the Bluetooth and the multitude of functionality benefits that brings, and the £70 of free games that Sony are giving away for a very limited period.

You would have to be insane to choose a PSP3000 over a GO personally.

Mark

The price has dropped so quickly, quite simply because very few outlets were actually selling it at that price… And those that were wishfully thinking they could sell at RRP were not get ANY sales, because so many other outlets were undercutting them (because they good, thanks to the high retailer margins on the UMD-less PSPGO).

Compare your fanboy reporting of this to the Registers.

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/10/06/psp_go_price_war/

And tell me you aren’t just publishing sensationalist BS.

http://www.electricpig.co.uk Joe Minihane

Hi Mark

Cheers for your reply. I’m a massive fan of The Register and the work it does. However, we’re very different sites and write in a different style. I would refute any suggestions that this is “fanboy reporting”. We have no favourites and call out any company or exec if there are issues.

We’re simply raising questions which have been aired to us. You’re answering the question right there: there are no sales at the RRP, so prices have had to be cut. Surely that’s an issue for Sony and retaielrs in the lead up to Christmas.

Again, keep your comments coming. We love keeping in touch with readers and what they think.

Cheers

Joe

Mark

You have twisted my words there. The point is there is a very large retailer margin on the GO (because there is no UMD sales to make up for low margins), because of this, retailers that don’t have gaming as their only business (i.e. mostly supermarkets, and more generic retailers) don’t need to rely on UMD sales, and can undercut those that do have to rely on them. The result is, not that people weren’t buying the PSP GO (they were, if you bothered to check the sale figures, PSP sales increased 100% last week) it’s that they were buying them from retailers that were selling them for less than RRP. All that’s happened, is those that were missing out on PSP sales as they kept to the RRP and kept their margins, they were forced to comply to the lower price, or risk selling none, and/or having unsold stock.

It’s a price war driven mainly by supermarkets, as correctly identified by El-Reg, however you took the fanboy Joystiq spin, that Sony were driving this out of some kind of desperation.
http://www.gravatar.com James Holland

I don’t see price cuts as a sign of manufacturer desperation. Sony won’t have cut the prices they’re selling them to retailers as you point out Mark, this is resellers eating into their own margins. But why? As you’ve already said, it’s because nobody was selling them at the RRP.

What we’ve done is highlight that this isn’t a one-off deal from a single retailer: it’s wider. We’re simply calling attention to it and (hoping) our readers get the best deal possible. Not sure why you’d object to that: you’ve clearly been keeping an eye on the price yourself.

Your allegations of Sony-bashing are hugely wide of the mark, and I think you’ve misunderstood us. Why would we report on a gadget we didn’t think there was interest in? Where’s the benefit for our readers? Fact is, the PSPgo is a good, solid device. If there’s the opportunity to get it for a lower price, or the possibility it could fall further, we’re duty bound to report that. In fact, you’d be entitled to have much stronger words with us if we didn’t.
Mark

“Your allegations of Sony-bashing are hugely wide of the mark”

I don’t think so… In your own words….

“The question remains, why have these big players decided now is the time for a price cut? Is the PSPgo really doing that badly?”

Mark

And the silence speaks for itself…..

http://www.gravatar.com James Holland

Sorry Mark, but we’re quite busy with other areas of the site as well as answering comments on stories. I’d love to enter into this further, but it seems we’re going in circles. There are plenty of examples (cited above) where we’ve given Sony a well-deserved slap on the back. Here, as I explained, we’re simply highlighting tumbling prices and asking a valid question about the timing of cuts. I’m not sure where your grievance is, or if you still have one. Regardless, hope you bought your PSPgo at the new, lower, cost.

PSPgo price already slashed

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