Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 2.2.07

Sony contemplates PS3 price cuts
A little more than a week ago, Sony’s Jack Tretton said there would not be a price cut to the PS3 any time soon.

Soon after Takao Yuhara announced, “We may look at the price as part of our strategy to expand the market when the timing is right.” Most sites are running with the idea that Sony has changed their stance on price. It doesn’t seem clear that Yuhara means Sony will change pricing any time soon, nor does he mention any specific territory.

Sony claims that they took a hit from the PS3 price reduction in Japan, so it seems counterintuitive for them to talk about more cuts. They are likely doing damage control since about every gaming website not owned by Sony has chalked up the phenomenon of PS3s sitting on shelves to its exorbitant price. →  Read the rest

Numbers are fun!

In the course of doing my job, I managed to stumble across some information about the stocks of video game companies. Turns out a Bloomberg terminal is a worthwhile investment (when I am not paying for it) after all. Basically, I am now able to put numbers (which will not be precise, since there may be some intellectual property rights at issue) next to musings such as “It seems the DS is selling a lot of unit,” or “What happened to the PSP, are there any games?” Please beware the frequent use of parenthetical statements (such as this one: DS = original DS + DS Lite).

Something that needs to be understood about the way traditional financial statistics apply to the video game industry (and entertainment media generally) is that there is a “round peg, square hole” problem. →  Read the rest