Rein: Sony financial issues prevented PS3 price drop

via Games Industry


Lower the price of the PlayStation 3 would have made a difficult year even worse for Sony, according to Epic Games' vice president Mark Rein. However, the platform holder "will get around to it in their own good time".

"The truth is Sony has had a difficult year and I think they had to do what they had to do to try to be profitable," Rein told Eurogamer. "They have their own financial issues to solve and lowering the price of the console would probably have made their situation worse. They will get around to it in their own good time. If you're willing to look at this as a long-term play, they're going to be just fine.

"

The Epic VP also expressed his view that gamers are nowhere near ready for a new generation of consoles.

"Over half the users who played Gears of War 2 so far do not have HDTVs," he said. "Of the systems that are out there now, the majority of them aren't plugged into HDTVs. So there's no way we're ready for the PlayStation 4 or the Xbox Whatever."

Instead, Sony and Microsoft will rely on their new respective control systems, the motion controller and Natal, to deliver new experiences.

"The two companies are very smart. They invested a lot in R&D, they have very good hardware that still has plenty of life left in it and they're both relaunching it with new experiences. We'll see new consoles, but they're a long way off. Look at Sony's financial situation - it's pretty clear they need to amortise this machine over a longer period.

"Let's look at, say, Christmas next year. Both PS3 and 360 will be at that point will be mature titles, developers knowing how to get more power out of them, auxiliary experiences like movie downloads and all that stuff," Rein added.