Yves Guillemot of Ubi and Frank Gibeau of EA can’t help but agree the price snip is great news, for them as publishers and for us the consumer, but mostly them.
It’s a ”great machine” and Ubi is happy to see it drop, ”particularly in the UK.” Studios ”make the ammunition” for the hardware wars, and the Slim with its price point ”will be hot,” says EA.
”It’s exceptional news, actually. I think the machine is a great machine, with the Blu-ray,” commented Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, reports GamesIndustry.biz.
”I’m happy that they were able to move to that, particularly in the UK,” referring to the new price point. The console has reduced to EUR 299 and GBP 249, in the mainland and UK respectively.
”I think it’s awesome,” chipped in EA Games president Frank Gibeau.
”It’s an old line, but it still rings true for us: ‘We make the ammunition for the hardware wars’. So the lowest priced hardware possible is a good thing for us. We want to see as big and broad a base as possible, and the Sony hardware is a good piece of equipment.”
The redesign of the PS3 as the ‘Slim’ will be good for Europe says Guillemot, it’ll help out Sony and the wider games industry overall. ”It’s also going to be a smaller machine, and I think this will help Sony and the whole industry - because everybody will react, and so we’ll be able to see it come to the mass market,” said the Ubi boss.
”Getting into that price point is just going to expand the market for us, especially in Europe. We have a lot of PS3 games, we’re a good supporter of Sony, we believe in the platform. We’ve got a lot of PSP games coming, and frankly we also support the PlayStation Network with direct-to-consumer releases,” added EA’s Gibeau.
”So we’re strong, committed partners of Sony and I’m extremely excited about the Slim - I think it looks great. And the price point will be hot.” The other big platform holders haven’t yet announced their price drops, and Gibeau can’t wait.
”The good news is that we still have a lot of price points to go yet - Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony - which points to a longer cycle for hardware this time around. And again, for us it’s great, because we don’t have to go out and build a whole new set of engines for next-gen.”
Has the Sony PS3 Slim and drops in the sales tag got your attention? Ubi and EA hope so, they’ve got ammunition to sell to the hardware frontlines.
PlayStation 3, the old and new - now demanding less of your monies!
