PS3, Xbox 360 Pricing Not Where EA Would Like

The PS3 and Xbox 360 have come a long way from their launch prices of $299 - $399 and $499 - $599 to $199 - $299 and $299, respectively. Still, those price points some four and five years after launch are approximate to the prices consoles had at the beginning of the previous generation, and that's just not good enough for Electronic Arts chief financial officer Eric Brown.

"I think pricing has not come down as much as we would have expected at this point in the cycle compared to the last," said Brown at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference attended by IGN.

Brown illustrated his point by noting that the recent PS3 price cut pushed sales up 84 percent during the holidays and the $50 Wal-Mart gift card with Wii purchase benefited Nintendo greatly. "We do have a long way to go with respect to pricing. Last cycle, approximately 48 percent of PS2 units were sold at a price point of $149 or less,” noted Brown. “Clearly at $299 we're nowhere near that price point."

When asked about the lifecycle for the current consoles, Brown said that things will be different than previous generations. "It's a possibility that we don't see a sharp and distinct console transition like we've seen in the past. Today, we have two of the three consoles operating at full, high-definition and are running games at 60 frames a second," said Brown. "If you have a multi-billion capital investment to develop the next generation hardware, the question I would ask is, 'If you were to produce that, what would you display it on?' There's really nothing in terms of broadly available consumer viewing technology other than 1080p televisions. You could upgrade in theory, but you wouldn't get the obvious graphic benefit that we saw that drove the transitions in the prior cycle.”

Over time, Brown expects that digital content, online multiplayer and Sony and Microsoft's motion controllers will extend the life of the current console generation.