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Sony Drops PS2 Price to $129 48

Posted by Zonk from the get-em-while-they're-hot dept.
Conradq writes "Effective immediately, consumers can purchase the PlayStation 2 computer entertainment system for a suggested retail price (SRP) of $129.99. Previously the console was priced at $149. The company opted for a subtle reduction in price ahead of this years E3, instead of a more dramatic $99 drop."
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Sony Drops PS2 Price to $129 More

Sony Drops PS2 Price to $129

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  • But Mario and Tony's Black Van Emporium has been selling these suckers for $50 a pop. Sure, you can't take it back for service, but at that price, you just buy a new one when the old one breaks.

    What I would like to see is Free as in Speech PS2s. Downloadable over the net, and fully compatible with all existing home appliances and operating systems.

    Is that so much to ask?

    • Re:Sony USA is lowering the prices, sure (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20, 2006 @09:51AM (#15164361)
      Reminds me of a post I read on another forum. Apperently in a movie theater, one of the anti-piracy ads before the show asked the audience "You wouldn't steal a car, would you?" to which an audience member shouted, "I would if I could fucking download one!"
      • Apperently in a movie theater, one of the anti-piracy ads before the show


        Maybe I'm silly, but don't people who pirate movies skip the whole going-to-a-movie-theater thing? Damn goofy MPAA.

        • Re:Sony USA is lowering the prices, sure (Score:1, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Contra-wise, personal experience and studies I think I read but can't seem to recall the address to (too lazy to google) suggest the opposite is true. Many years ago I was a 0 day distributor on a certain IRC network and I was seeing (and not cam'ing, i hated cam's from the beginning) a movie or two every week with one of the other a-ops. The games I play I pay for, some I have multiple copies of. Similar to the music industry, where purchased music increased with the release and popularization of napster,

  • They Just Don't Get It (Score:1, Interesting)

    by zoomba ( 227393 )
    With the GameCube already below that price, and with all the next gen consoles coming out right now, staying above $100.00 is stupid. It's too much money for a platform that is going to be abandoned within a year. We've already seen a dramatic drop in current-gen sales as everyone is waiting for their next-gen console of choice.

    Considering how old the PS2 is now, and how little life it has left in it, this just serves as further proof that Sony is out of touch with the US market. It bodes ill for what the

    • Re:They Just Don't Get It (Score:5, Informative)

      by the_humeister ( 922869 ) on Thursday April 20, 2006 @10:01AM (#15164450)
      I really don't see it that way since Sony's sold more than 1 million PS2 consoles last year. I've read that in the time period since the introduction of the XBox 360, Sony still sold more PS2s.
    • abandoned in less than a year? you do realize that the PS1 production just ended over 5 years into the PS2's life span. the PS2 isn't going anywhere.

    • Re:They Just Don't Get It (Score:4, Insightful)

      by EnglishTim ( 9662 ) on Thursday April 20, 2006 @10:15AM (#15164568)
      I doubt the PS2 will be abandoned within a year. They've only just stopped producing the PSOne, FFS!

      No, there'll still be new PS2 games coming out for a couple of years yet - the installed base is huge, so it doesn't make sense for publishers to jump ship too early to the PS3 until the installed base for it gets bigger. Even when the number of new titles begins to taper off, there'll still be a huge back-catalogue of secondhand games to be gotten cheaply.

      I see it like this: PS2 games won't start to taper off until the end of 2007 or the beginning of 2008. There'll still be quite a few titles coming out for a year after that. It wouldn't surprise me if there are still a few games trickling out in 2009! If you buy a PS2 now, that's still 2.5 years of new software to look forward to. Combine that with the huge back-catalogue, (much of it available very cheaply or secondhand) and it makes a lot of sense, especially if you don't have a HD TV or are a bit strapped for cash.
    • Personally I think its great. Any price drop is great in fact.

      My personal bet is that they're trying to "pre-compensate" for the lost of money they'll make when they start selling the PS3's because you can bet your ass they'll be losing money on it to catch up on XBox.

      Besides, at 129$, that's not too bad, It'll allow me to play the games I can't play anymore because my current ps2's len is too worn out to read anymore.

    • YOU Just Don't Get It (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      With the GameCube already below that price, and with all the next gen consoles coming out right now, staying above $100.00 is stupid.

      Even with all the other platforms coming out PS2 STILL outsells all the other consoles even at the more expensive $150 price point? Remember, Sony can drop the price of PS2 again at the drop of a hat, but you can never go back UP in price.
      • And don't forget that over their lifetimes both the Xbox and GameCube have been pushed for sales by the PS1, which has averaged 80-85% of their shipments despite being a generation back and sitting next to the (obviously superior, even to an idiot) PS2 on many retailer's shelves. It will be very interesting if Sony can pull off that quiet trick again...
    • If staying over $100 is so stupid, how do you explain March's NPD figures?

      Xbox 360 = 192,000
      PS2 = 273,000
      Xbox = 83,000
      GCN = 63,000

      Sure, there's an argument that the 360 could have sold more if they were better stocked, but are potential 360 owners really going to want a PS2 instead at any price?
    • The PS3 will retail for $299. And if it doesn't at release, it will within 6 months. They'll gouge the bleeding-edge turds and drop the price once those sales slacken. And they'll slacken as quickly as their production facilities can meet demand. Once that demand drops, the price drops. $300. Been saying this for a year. Will be proven correct.

    • You Just Don't Get It (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ivan256 ( 17499 ) *
      They're sitting back and raking in profits. People keep buying them, even at $149.

      Considering how old the PS2 is now, and how little life it has left in it, this just serves as further proof that Sony is out of touch with the US market.

      Considering sales, and the similar situation they had when the PSOne came out, it's clear that they're well in touch with the US market. PS2 is still outselling the Xbox360, and there's no reason to expect that it will stop any time between now and when the 360 exits the mark
    • "It's too much money for a platform that is going to be abandoned within a year."

      Um, the PS2 already has a proven library behind it. If you're just now jumping on the bandwagon, that $100 is going to be money well spent. Who cares if the new stuff isn't going to be coming out much longer? It's not like you've got less to play than the guy who bought it at launch. You will, however, have paid a good deal less than he did.
    • The PS2 is about 4.5 years old. Sony's plans were for it to have around a 9 year product life (give or take a year). I'm expecting the PS2 will still be around for a while....

  • Awesome! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Rob T Firefly ( 844560 ) on Thursday April 20, 2006 @09:56AM (#15164404) Homepage Journal
    Now I can finally afford to replace my first-gen PS2 with all the disc read errors!

    Actually, anyone really serious about picking up a PS2 nowadays need only hold out until the PS3 release, and the resulting flooding of the used PS2 market.

    • I've fixed several ps2s with such problems, and even got a free one that way. More likely than not yours is caused by the same thing that causes most of them.. Google for ps2 disc read error and you'll find plenty of sites providing instructions on how to repair it it. The problem is so common that Tech TV/G4 or whatever it is now even had a page about it. As long as you're patient, it's easy to fix, just going to take a bit of time.
    • I have 3 PS2s. All work. 2 are old-style "large" PS2 with FFXI HDDs. 1 is a slim, for portability... take the PS2 and DDR gear to friends houses, for instance. I can't see any reason to get rid of any of them when the PS3 comes out.

      A lot of other people will probably have their own reasons... even if the PS3 is PS2-compat, you can use the second PS2 for a networked multiplayer stuff you're used to, or whatever.

      Since the price of the PS2 will likely drop to $99 or less, there's a certain saturation p

  • One Word: Dominance (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20, 2006 @09:57AM (#15164418)
    Looking back at the PS2 over the past six years it is staggering just how good Sony is.

    Sony and the PS2 has a chance of hitting 115-120 million by the time the system goes out of production in the next few years. The PS2 will most likely sell more units starting this year until the system goes out of production in the next few years than either the GameCube or Xbox did over their entire lifetimes.

    The PS2 is a technological masterpiece. The PS2 hardware was pretty much finalized back in 1997 and just look at the new God of War 2 footage from GDC:

    http://youtube.com/results?search=god+of+war+2&sea rch_type=search_videos&search=Search [youtube.com]

    No wonder Sony's six year old console has been outselling Microsoft's new console by a wide margin in all three regions and this is before the price drop.

    • It's for the ps3.
    • Dominance it is. In FY 2003 alone, the PS2 shipped more units worldwide (22.52 million) than either Xbox or GameCube have done in total, according to the latest available official figures from all 3 companies, which are 22 million Xboxes between 11/01 and 3/05, and 20.61 million GameCubes between 9/01 and 1/06).

      The breakdown of PlayStation shipments shows this, with over 20,000,000 PS1s being shipped in the first 5 years since the launch of PS2. PS1 sales over the lifetime of the GameCube and Xbox are in
    • The PS2 is a technological masterpiece
      Is that with, or without, the ROM drive?
    • "The PS2 will most likely sell more units starting this year until the system goes out of production in the next few years than either the GameCube or Xbox did over their entire lifetimes."

      Perhaps, but Sony spent a hell of a lot of money to get that marketshare. (heh Microsoft's expenditures are far more humourous.) Nintendo has a fraction of it and they ended up with more money. Sony is 'sooo goooood'? Or is it "Sony is sooo rich"? Don't forget that this is the same Sony that made wild claims about th
      • The sad fact is that God of War 2 could easily be made for the GC and the XBOX, and in all likelihood, it would look better because they don't suffer from the same silly bottlenecks as the PS2 hardware does.

        Actually GoW2 is fairly tightly tuned to the PS2. It would be difficult to do the same game on the GameCube, because it doesn't have as much memory. Plus you'd need at least four discs for all the content. XBox is a possibility, but we'd have to tone down some of the particle and fullscreen effects, as i
        • "Actually GoW2 is fairly tightly tuned to the PS2. It would be difficult to do the same game on the GameCube, because it doesn't have as much memory. Plus you'd need at least four discs for all the content."

          The GameCube has hardware texture compression, the PS2 does not. It's difficult to imagine that would be any trouble. As for storage, do you have a source that says they're using a full 6 gig for the game? Do we even know why it would take that much? The chances are pretty darned good they could stil
          • Actually we used all 8GB of a dual layered DVD.
          • The GameCube has hardware texture compression, the PS2 does not. It's difficult to imagine that would be any trouble.

            1: The ps2 has 32 megs (31 megs excluding kernel) vs 24 for the GC. and 30% matters alot.
            2: We actually had hell to port a DC(that had texture compression) game to the ps2 (headhunter), but for that title it wasn't the texture compression that was the biggest problem. it was that artists had tuned the 3d scenery for the DC that had hardware alpha-sorting.
            There is(was?) no official built i
  • Games like "Shadow of the Colussus" prove to me that the console has a lot of life in it. If you don't want to pay $129 for a new one, check out ebay. I just purchased a PS2 (my 2nd) for $85 with 2 games. My previous PS2 worked just fine for years but then died a few months ago (and it was refurbished when I got it).

    While it would be nice if the PS2 dropped to $99, there's no reason for Sony to cut that price if they are still selling like crazy. Might as well maximize that profit while you can!

    Do y

  • The company opted for a subtle reduction in price ahead of this years E3, instead of a more dramatic $99 drop.

    That's a shame. I'd actually buy one for $50. Guess I'll be waiting to see used prices after the PS3 comes out.

  • I think those with complaints about the price are just thinking about what they would spend. The right price is what people will pay for it. And I guarantee someone paid $149 for a new PS2 console yesterday. In fact, thousands probably did. So $129 is just the new price that Sony thinks will spur MORE sales. I think anyone who has waited this long for a PS2 should thank the 101 million other people who bought them before today because that is why the price is where its at today. Its good for the indus
  • I'd be happy if Microsoft at least responded by shipping more $149.99 systems.

    AFAIK if you want a new Xbox (at least in the U.S.), you have to buy the $179.99 Forza bundle. (Which is a complete rip-off considering you can get Forza for less than $30 on its own)
  • In a related note: God of War is a cheap "Greatest Hits" Game now. I picked it up last week with Devil May Cry 3 for $15 each. This is the kind of progress I like to see.
  • I seem to remember a day when game systems (among other things technological) would drop in price according to when the seller chose, not by decree of the manufacturer. What on earth happened? How are Sony and Microsoft and Nintendo and other manufacturers allowed to prevent retailers from determining their own pricing?

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