CNN drops PS3 price story as Stringer comments are confuted

Comments published in a CNN article yesterday purporting to be from Sony CEO Howard Stringer regarding the planned pricing for PlayStation 3 have been removed after it emerged that he had not said anything on the question.

The article, which is attributed to FORTUNE senior editor Peter Lewis and was published on the CNN Money website, referenced a new interview with Stringer which has been published in Fortune magazine.

However, in the original version of the article, Lewis cited Stringer as saying that the PS3 would be priced between $300 and $400, and would launch in the middle of next year in Japan, followed by a US launch a couple of months later.

It transpires that no such information was discussed in the original FORTUNE interview - and CNN Money has now pulled the quotes, placing an addendum on the article which says that "Stringer has not commented publicly on how much the PS3 is expected to cost, or how soon it will appear in the US after the Japanese launch in spring 2006."

So where did the information come from, then? The culprit appears to be a Hollywood Reporter article on another interview with Stringer, which appeared a few weeks ago and also appeared to attribute pricing and availability information to the Sony CEO.

However, on closer inspection, the article was actually citing an anonymous source within Sony - a fine detail which the CNN article apparently missed, setting the whole rumour mill rolling once again.

To date, then, the only official comments on PS3 pricing have come in the form of admonishments from Sony Computer Entertainment boss Ken Kutaragi that the new hardware will be expensive - although some commentators feel that these statements are more an indication of Sony's desire to keep the PS2 selling strongly than any real indication of PS3's price point.