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Techradar: Sony PlayStation’s US division has moved quickly to dismiss reports from earlier this week, emerging from anonymous sources apparently within Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, that the company had plans to slash the price of the PlayStation 3 around March 2009.

While both Microsoft’s various Xbox 360 packages and Nintendo’s Wii are pretty competitively priced right now, Sony has stuck to its guns on pricing.

Sony has constantly come under attack from some quarters for its strategy on PS3 pricing.

Following the rumours of a planned PS3 price cut emerging yet again this week, a Sony Computer Entertainment America rep told Edge:

“There are no plans for a price reduction on PS3 in March 09, and anything reported on or discussed otherwise is purely rumour or speculation.”

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Techradar: With the increasing number of PS3 peripherals coming out of Sony, we get the feeling that anything they lose in future price cuts on the console itself, they’ll claw back in must-have add-ons that no one can resist.

The latest is a solution to the problem of having to leave the PS3 turned on to juice its USB ports for charging wireless Sixaxis or DualShock 3 controllers – a charger on the end of an AC adapter instead.

The CECHZA 1J will arrive in Japan first, offering two USB ports on one end of the adapter.

The latter, of course, plugs into the wall, while the USB ports feed your controllers via the mini USB cables they came with.

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Register Hardware: Sony must slash the PlayStation 3’s retail price in order to avoid losing sales to its arch-rival, Microsoft’s Xbox 360, a gaming analyst has warned.

Jesse Divnich, an analyst at US investment house EDAAR, said in a recently published research note that the PS3’s €292 price tag – which applies to the 80GB model – “is simply too steep”.

He stressed that Sony must reduce the price in the run-up to Christmas, to avoid customers choosing cheaper alternatives.

The analyst’s comments might fall of deaf ears at Sony, though. In July, Nobuyuki Oneda, Sony’s CFO, said that the company’s “plan is not to reduce the price” of the PS3.

Instead, the firm’s long-term strategy is to concentrate on profitability, rather than selling more PS3s.

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GamePro.com: Following rumors of a looming Xbox 360 price drop, Sony says those hoping for a PlayStation 3 drop at this week’s Games Convention in Germany “will be disappointed.”

“It’s not going to happen,” a SCEA spokesman told Reuters last Friday. “If you’re coming for that you’ll be disappointed.”

Both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 saw their first price drops in late 2007. As consumers continue to gobble up the industry-leading Wii, many gamers wonder when Sony and Microsoft will respond with a more enticing mainstream price.

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Financial Times: Kaz Hirai, chief executive of Sony’s PlayStation games console business, has set an ambitious target of reaching nearly 150m in sales for its slow-starting PlayStation 3 console.

Sony’s loss-making games unit into profitability is Mr Hirai’s most pressing task. The massive costs of investing in the games console, which is equipped with a Blu-ray player and the powerful “Cell” chip, means that Sony is still incurring a loss on every PS3 sold.

Mr Hirai, in a Financial Times interview, said his aim was for the PS3 to surpass sales of the PS2 over a similar time period.

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Gamesdog: Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has finally announced a date for the eagerly awaited DualShock 3 wireless controller for the PlayStation 3.

When the PS3 launched last year, the wireless Sixaxis control was released in all of its motion-sensing glory. However the familiar vibrate and rumble of the DualShock that we all knew and loved was missing due to legal action at the time against both Microsoft and Sony for patent infringement. Microsoft chose to settle out of court, while Sony battled on.

Now a few months and $100 million dollars later, Sony has also settled its differences with the company, and the path has been made clear to release the controller that should have been included with the PS3 from the start.

Just like the other DualShock controllers that have sold 28 million since 1998, DualShock 3 features the vibration function while also encorporating the motion-sensitive controls and wireless technology that made Sixaxis so popular.

David Reeves, president and CEO, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, said: “We are delighted to confirm that DualShock 3 will be released in SCEE territories in early July. We hope this will add to the intense gaming experience for our fans, as we continue to evolve PS3, its software and its peripherals.”

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TrustedReviews: Having been told on the PlayStation Blog that that in-game XMB is coming soon alongside Trophies it seems too good to be true that film downloads on the PlayStation Network would be confirmed within the same week. That’s exactly what the just-published Sony Group Corporate Strategy Update FY2008—FY2010 has revealed, though.

The report explains that Sony plans to make film downloads available via its network services, including the PlayStation Network sooner than many expected.

“We are planning to expand services that will enable our customers to enjoy content such as motion pictures and television programming through the network on a variety of Sony products such as Bravia LCD TVs, PS3, PSP and Walkman video music players”.

The interesting line regarding the PS3 is Sony’s promise to “roll out video services across key Sony products by FY2010, starting with the summer 2008 launch on the PlayStation Network.

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Eurogamer: Selling your console for less than it costs to make doesn’t come cheap. Sony should know – they lost USD 2.16 billion (1.4 billion Euro) on PS3 in 2007, and a further USD 1.16 billion (0.7 billion Euro) this year.

That’s according to the company’s latest financial report, as read by Kotaku and GamesIndustry.biz.

The PS3 allegedly cost USD 800 (515 Euro) to manufacture when it launched in 2006, but was sold for USD 500 – 600 (320 – 385 Euro).

Now the company has warned investors that ” the large-scale investment required during the development and introductory period of a new gaming platform may not be fully recovered”.

Sony said it has spent loads on research and development of components, including semiconductors for PS3. These kind of expenditures don’t get recouped if consoles “fail to achieve such favourable market penetration… Resulting in a significant negative impact on Sony’s profitability”.

Still, at least the game division’s sales are on the up. They rose by 26.3 per cent in the 2008 financial year .

More than 9.2 million PS3 consoles were sold last year, up by 5.63 million over the year before. Game sales rose by 44.6 million and reached 57.9 million.

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HEXUS.gaming: According to Jeff Bell, the head of global marketing for Microsoft’s games business,Europe is set to be the key battleground in 2008 as Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s Playstation 3 go head to head in a bid to grab a decent chunk of a business that is now globally worth a reported $30 billion.

“Europe for us is still the swing,” Bell said. “The biggest challenge is that Sony as a brand has had greater staying power than in other areas. Not just PlayStation 3, but Sony as a brand,” Bell said.

Following price drops, bundle deals and the launch of lower-end models, both companies have seen a significant surge in sales in the last quarter of 2007 and, in an interview with Reuters, Bell said that he believes Microsoft will have a successful 2008 and beat last year’s sales figures.

Microsoft has enjoyed their best year yet in terms of game sales, with the likes of Bioshock, Forza Motorsport 2, Mass Effect and Halo 3 flying off the shelves and spurring on sales of the Xbox 360. Sony on the other hand has suffered a rollercoaster ride of a year with a difficult start to the PS3 launch, thanks in no small part to the ridiculous price point and an initial range of fairly average games, but business is now significantly picking up for them and they’ve got a fair few eye-catching games coming up in the new year.

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Monsters and Critics: Sony has confirmed that the current 60 GB model PS3 will drop in price from $600 (approx. 440 euro) to $500 effective monday (approx. 367 euro)

Now here’s the surprise: they announced another model that will have a $600 pricetag (approx. 440 euro). This ‘new’ PS3 will be identical, except it will come with an 80 GB hard drive AND a game.

Unfortunately those eager beavers wanting to get their hands on the new 80 GB version will have to wait until august.

Sony also said they have plans to offer high-definition movie downloads for the PS3 but details won’t be announced until a later date. Maybe at E3… probably after.

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PS³: Sony Chairman and CEO Sir Howard Stringer has said that Sony is studying how much it can lower the price of the PS3, while speaking on a video interview with the Financial Times.

He also praised Nintendo’s pricing for the Wii, stating that “Nintendo Wii has been a successful enterprise, and a very good business model, compared with ours . . . because it’s cheaper.”

When asked how much Sony could afford to bring down the price of the PS3, he replied “That is what we are studying at the moment. That’s what we are trying to refine.”

He also admitted that there was “no question” that consumers want the price of the PS3 lower.

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Wired: Logitech’s Cordless Precision controllers for PlayStation 2 and Xbox were widely considered to be the best standard control pads on the systems — quite rare for third-party peripherals. But IGN’s take on Logitech’s PlayStation 3 pad makes me wonder why they even bothered.The PS3 version, which is available now, doesn’t work with the built-in Bluetooth — you need a USB dongle. And even worse, it doesn’t feature Sixaxis motion sensing at all!

It does have rumble, not that any PlayStation 3 games use it. So it just sits there, alone and unloved, wishing it were a motion sensor.

Yeah, it’s cheaper than a normal PS3 controller. But why bother when it lacks crucial functionality?

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