PS2 dropping below $100!

akkari

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Original article at: http://tinyurl.com/ps2pricedrop

Buzz Over Sony's 'Big' PlayStation Announcement Trumps Reality



Don’t be surprised if the gaming blogosphere lets out a primal scream of disappointment. After speculating for weeks about what Sony’s videogaming unit was planning to announce this week, bloggers finally got the news—but it wasn’t what many had been hoping for.
On March 31, Sony said it had lowered its suggested retail price for the PlayStation 2 to $99 in North America and 99 euros in Europe. The PS2, which Amazon’s U.S. site lists for $130, has sold more than 136 million units (through December 2008) since its launch in 2000 and is still selling well. In February, Sony sold about 131,000 PS2s in the U.S., according to market researcher NPD’s latest stats. Not bad for a nine-year-old console when the newer PlayStation 3 had sales of just 276,000 units. (By comparison, Nintendo sold 753,000 Wiis and Microsoft 391,000 Xbox 360s). Sony predicts it will sell 8 million PS2 consoles by the March 31 fiscal year end.
For the past week, the blogosphere had whipped itself into a guessing-game frenzy about what Sony could possibly be keeping from us all. Could it be the long-awaited price cut for the PS3? Or some new video-downloads deal? Or maybe a new PlayStation Portable 2 that would go head-to-head with the upcoming North American launch of the latest incarnation of Nintendo’s portable console, the DSi? Or, in a worse-case scenario, a new annual fee that users would have to pay to play games online, like Microsoft’s Xbox Live?
And why was Sony doing this after last week’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco? (Theories: Either it was so small Sony worried it would get drowned out by other announcements or so big that Sony felt it deserved to be a standalone.)
Even I finally gave in to the peer pressure and emailed a Sony Computer Entertainment official in Tokyo today to see if there was anything to the rumors. I got what amounted to a head-fake. “The rumor saying we are about to announce something ‘big’ related to PS3 is nothing more than a mere rumor,” the official replied. Misleading, maybe, but not a lie. Thankfully, I decided to wait and see what it was before I joined the fray.
What fascinates me is how adept Sony’s PR machine is at word-of-mouth advertising. All the company has to do is whisper about some imminent unveiling to bloggers at a few gaming sites—and then sit back and watch it spread with viral efficiency. Kotaku’s blurb from last Friday, for instance, drew 168 comments and countless more eyeballs. The problem with planting kernels of information on the Net is the potential letdown when a much-anticipated announcement fails to live up to the hype. The next time the go-to gaming bloggers may feel less inclined to help the buzz.
 

Kayos

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You'd think they'd drop the price of the PS3 over this.
 

saynelabs

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I guess that's good if your PS2 bites the dust, but...

This is definitely non-news.
 

dquigley

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People still play ps2? Get a wii already.

Facts

Twice the price
Ten times the fun
a million times less likely to break, they dont, nintendo is invincible compared to sony and microsoft. I know cause I worked at a busy electronics repair shop. We only had 2 wiis and each one was from abuse aka sticking coins in cd reader by kids.
 

Kayos

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People still play ps2? Get a wii already.

Facts

Twice the price
Ten times the fun
a million times less likely to break, they dont, nintendo is invincible compared to sony and microsoft. I know cause I worked at a busy electronics repair shop. We only had 2 wiis and each one was from abuse aka sticking coins in cd reader by kids.


No, the PS2 is a millions times the console the Wii is. The fact that Nintendo pretty much has abandoned it's core fans is evidence enough. The Wii is great for short bursts of fun or in a party environment but otherwise for the hardcore gamers it just lacks in every way possible.
 

Jonthefisherman

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No, the PS2 is a millions times the console the Wii is. The fact that Nintendo pretty much has abandoned it's core fans is evidence enough. The Wii is great for short bursts of fun or in a party environment but otherwise for the hardcore gamers it just lacks in every way possible.

Agreed %100. I couldn't just sit down and play a Wii for hours like I could with games like Socom, Battlefield and Call of Duty on the PS2. (That's online AND offline). Also, the PS2 I had for over 3 years now (Fat PS2) is EXTREMELY durable and has never broken on me. My friend has split pop on it, hell I've even dropped it down the stairs a couple times yet it continues to work perfectly.
 
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