PlayStation 3 Developers Pester Sony for Price Cut

Out of a desire to reach more gamers, PS3 developers want Sony to drop the price on the premium system, broadening its audience.

Consumers have long pined for a cheaper PlayStation 3, but now that chorus of complaints has a new voice: the guys who make the games. In a recent Bloomberg article, several developers vocally expressed their disappointment over the console’s $400 price tag, which has forced some of them to move on to more fertile ground.

“Sony obviously still has a ways to go with their pricing,” Electronic Arts’ head of sports games, Peter Moore, told Bloomberg. His company has recently begun releasing more Wii-only titles, and several other company execs have ribbed Sony over the PS3’s price point before.

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot gave his take with a little more subtlety. “Anytime a console manufacturer reduces the price, software publishers benefit,” he told Bloomberg.

Though consumers may hold out hope for a cheaper system soon, and analysts see it as a necessity, Sony says: don’t hold your breath. “Everybody in the development community would love for the PS3 to be free, so they could just sell razor blades,” Peter Dille, senior vice president of marketing at SCEA said, and denied rumors that a price cut was on the way.