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PS3 Launch Price Was a Mistake: Sony Studios Boss

PS3 Launch Price Was a Mistake: Sony Studios Boss

By Rishi Alwani | Updated: 11 July 2018 20:26 IST

Highlights

The PS3 launched in 2006
It was extremely expensive at launch
The system was notoriously hard to make games for

The PS3 launched in 2006. And while it found its footing after a poor start, it's widely regarded as the least successful of all of Sony's home console efforts. A big reason for this was its price at launch. In the US, the PS3 price was $599 for the 60GB variant while in India it launched for Rs. 40,000 in March 2007. However, it managed to recover thanks to a host of solid exclusives and astute price cuts ending up selling close to 84 million units, with around 350,000 of them in India. Twelve years after the abysmal launch and Sony's subsequent return to form with the likes of God of War 3 and Uncharted 2 on the console, Sony Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida admits it was a mistake. At UK game conference Develop, the executive labelled the PS3 launch price as "horrifying".

He also reflected on the PS3's development. The third-party library was limited and it was painful for developers to make games for it. So much so that it was in peril from the moment it hit the shelves, shedding light on the circumstances under which it was made and its creator, Ken Kutaragi.

"Ken [Kutaragi] was such a brilliant engineer - the team that worked for Ken was so motivated, he was a great motivator," said Yoshida.

"Maybe he was using video games as a stepping stone to realise his vision and dreams; he wanted to become the next Intel or something... We weren't given access until it was done... He didn't see the need to involve game developers in the design of the system; that's how the PS3 was made, and you know how successful it was."

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Further reading: PS3, Shuhei Yoshida, Sony, PlayStation 3, Ken Kutaragi

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