The retail price required for a console to reach mass market appeal is an elusive figure, and it’s safe to say that for the current generation we are still a long way away from that point. In speculating about that figure, there is often a gulf between the perspectives of the platform holders and the consumer. The Sony’s and Microsoft’s will argue that because of their systems’ amazing capabilities, consumers are willing to pay more than they did in previous generations. But on the other hand, consumers are accustomed to parting with the same sum of money as they did for previous generation consoles, irrespective of wizzbang technology. Their standards and expectations of the gaming experience have been kicked up a notch, yet the amount of money in their wallets remains the same.

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick clearly recognized this situation when he said today that Microsoft and Sony must drop the prices of their respective consoles to $199 in the next two years in order to reach mass market appeal. Furthermore, he believes that the $250 Wii is also responsible for this.

The Wii at its price point is now setting a standard and an expectation, and people say, ‘Well, the Wii is less complex technically.’ I don’t think that really matters as much to the consumer…In the next 24 months they all will need to be at that $199 price point, and you can imagine Nintendo will be down to the $129 price point over the next few years

via 1UP

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This entry was posted by Justin Arulnathan on Thursday, November 29th, 2007 at 6:37 am and is filed under Industry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.