$ony Paystation 3

(A friend of mine recently informed me that rumors are floating around about the Sony Gameslave 3 ... err ... Playstation 3 selling for between $500 and $700 when it comes out. The following was my response.)

I bet they sell about three of them. There aren't very many people that are willing to pay that much for a console. It doesn't matter if the thing can render 800 million shaded polygons per second and toast bread at the same time because price is really what determines whether a new technology sinks or floats. Look at zip drives - they were faster than floppy drives, much more reliable, and they held way more data. Totally superior in every way - except they were expensive. They died without ever catching on because people would rather go through the extra effort of burning a CD that's worth a couple pennies than drop a few hundred on a zip drive and then pay $50 or whatever outrageous price per zip disk.

Remember the Neo-Geo? Neither does anyone else. That was one of those systems that existed around the time of NES/Genesis/SNES. They sold for maybe $600-$700. I knew one person that owned one. Everyone had Nintendo and Genesis at the time because that's what was affordable; nobody gave a damn that the graphics were inferior.

If the rumors are true, Sony is really going to shoot themselves in the foot with this one. A $700 PS3 will sell about as well as a Sony Betamax VCR.