Interview: Sony 'Expecting Nice Uptick' in PS3 Sales

Following the PS3 Slim and price reduction news today (among other announcements from Sony's conference at Gamescom), IndustryGamers hopped on the phone with Eric Lempel, SCEA's director of PlayStation Network operations, to talk about the impact of the new model PS3 and more.  

The industry – publishers and analysts alike – have been practically crying out for a price cut on PlayStation 3 all year long. Sales have been slumping for PS3, and hardware sales in general in the U.S. are down across the board. Whether or not Microsoft and Nintendo cut prices as well remains to be seen, but bringing the PS3 down from $399 to $299 was a move many felt was long overdue. So what does Sony think? As you might expect, the company is quite optimistic about its PS3 business going forward. 

“We're expecting a pretty nice uptick starting today,” Lempel told us. “Even though the new model is not out we've reduced the price on all the existing models, so I definitely think we're looking forward to a significant increase in sales. We're not disclosing any specific percentages at this time... but it's exciting. This has been part of our strategy for a while now, and we're happy to finally release this.”  

Lempel stressed that this is not a reactionary move and these sorts of price cuts and hardware redesigns are always planned far in advance. “This is not something that's easy to do – to redesign and cost reduce hardware. It's been part of our plan all along as we move forward with our mid to long-term strategy. We did it with our past two consoles and we definitely felt the timing was right for PS3, especially going into the holiday season with all the great titles we've got coming. A lot of consumers have been thinking about this, so now it's a great time for them to finally jump into PS3,” he added. 

Sony is still expecting to sell 13 million units of PS3 this year, and Lempel noted that the new price and PS3 Slim redesign will do a lot to help the company meet its targets. And he told us that Sony is planning “a massive marketing campaign” based around the PS3 Slim and the new price, which we'll be seeing pretty soon. As some of the analysts we spoke with indicated, educating consumers on the PS3's value at $299 will be key. Lempel agreed. “We're going to make sure consumers understand everything that the PS3 can do, the full value, and of course let them know that it is at a new price... So you're going to start seeing and hearing a lot more on this very soon. Now that we've got it as this price, we're going to do everything to get the message across,” he said.  

Lempel also confirmed that Sony has ceased production on all older versions of PS3 – the new PS3 Slim will be the only model available once the older inventory is sold through at retail. This of course simplifies Sony's offerings and should reduce any consumer confusion with multiple SKUs, although Lempel said he never felt that was an issue. The PS3 Slim comes with a 120GB hard drive, but just as with older models, users can easily swap it out for bigger laptop-sized drives. The reduced housing size of the PS3 Slim has thankfully not eliminated that functionality, Sony confirmed with us.

Check out page two for Lempel's thoughts on PSP Go interest and the impact of the new Minis...