Sony's PSP Go "ripping off" the consumer - Pachter
New handheld cheaper to manufacture, but Sony has "jacked up the price," claims analyst
Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter has said that Sony is deliberately ripping off consumers by pricing the new PSP Go at USD 249 in North America.
He claimed the current PSP-3000, which supports a disc drive and packaged goods, is more expensive to build than the new model which supports purely digital content.
"I'm sorry to say it, I don't want to get bad fan mail from the Sony fanboys, but Sony is ripping off the consumer until they sell a couple of million," said Pachter to GameTrailers.
"Disc assembly for UMD costs more than 16GB of Flash does," he added. "So this new device doesn't cost them as much to make as the PSP-3000 and they've jacked the price up USD 80. And if consumers don't buy it then the price is going to come down. They're making a lot more money on the PSP Go than the PSP-3000."
He also noted that both Sony and Microsoft announced new digital content delivery methods at E3 last week, suggesting these were more important than any game or hardware announcements at the show.
"PSP Go is a game changer for digital delivery and yet they're still going to support the PSP-3000, they've got to keep the retailers happy.
"This year's show is 'packaged goods are going away'. Half of all gaming purchases ten years from now are going to be digital. You can see it coming for the first time ever, the console manufacturers are behind it," said Pachter.
Earlier this week, Sony's Andrew House told GamesIndustry.biz that he didn't think the price of the PSP Go was too high, particularly in Europe where the unit will retail for EUR 249, because the region is "less price driven".