250°
218w ago - Sony Corp. is under
pressure from video game publishers to cut the price of the PlayStation 3 console, or risk seeing more development funds shift to Nintendo Co.'s Wii.
To quote: PS3 sales in the next 12 months are likely to total 14 million, compared with 28 million Wiis and 9.7 million Xbox 360s, according to the Daiwa Institute of Research, a Tokyo-based researcher and consultant.
Price cuts have an immediate impact.
Sony reduced the PS3 price from $499.99 in October 2007 and sales more than doubled in the next month. In September, Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft released its lowest-priced Xbox 360, at $199.99. The company almost doubled Sony's U.S. shipments from October to January after trailing PS3 in the prior three months, NPD data show.
"Anytime a console manufacturer reduces the price, software publishers benefit,"
Yves Guillemot, chief executive officer of Ubisoft Entertainment SA, Europe's largest video-game maker, said in an e-mail.
Game makers now focus development in two directions: one for the top-selling Wii and the other for Xbox 360, PS3 and personal computers.
Titles for Microsoft and Sony are typically...