What is the difference between a PS3 sold in the UK and Australia and one sold in the USA? “Greedy retailers,” says a Sony Computer Entertainment executive who contacted SmartHouse this week.
“We have higher go to market costs which is why we need to charge more,” a senior SCE executive recently told me.
As I understand it, Sony in the UK, the US and Australia supply major retailers of their products direct with the products being manufactured and shipped direct to the retailers who sell up to 60% of the product and related software.
However, one Sony insider in Australia has suggested that the reason for the higher price in the UK and Australia is the demands being put on Sony by the mass market retailers. “In both the UK and Australia we are giving away a lot more margin to the retailers than we are in the USA. They want money for advertising and marketing, margin for selling the product and additional margin for hitting targets. In some mass market retailers gaming and flat panel TVs is in part carrying retailers in the current economic climate, we even have to pay for in store merchandising and promotions”.
Currently a PS3 in Australia is $105 more expensive than the same model being sold in the USA.
In recent days speculation has circulated that Sony will slash the price of their PS3. The Company has also said that they will meet its sales forecast of 10 million units by the end of its fiscal year which finishes in March 2009.
Sony said that over 4 million PS3s were sold in the three months ending December 31, which is a decrease over the previous year. They have also lowered their forecast for the PSP from 16 million units to 15 million units.
