Sony reportedly considering £300 price tag for PlayStation 4

With Sony’s PlayStation event right around the corner, new rumours about an imminent PlayStation 4 announcement are crawling out of the woodwork. The latest one is the price of the next-gen console. According to Eurogamer, Sony is considering pricing the PS4 at £300 (approx. Rs 25,000) in the UK.

The £300 price-tag seems to be very low, especially compared to the launch price of the PlayStation 3. The PS3 was launched in the UK at a price tag of £425. It is worth noting that the UK price of the PS4 will be the local price, and not the price directly converted from the Japanese version, which is said to cost 40,000 yen (approx Rs 23,000). When the console makes its way to India, we can expect a price of approximately Rs 30,000 to 35,000.

In the end, the pricing of the console in the country comes down to the duty that the company will face when it imports them into India and how much the company is willing to absorb the duty. Sony and Microsoft are well known to absorb duty, or we’d be paying exorbitant prices, considering our duty amounts to 50 percent of the system’s price. This can be seen in Nintendo’s pricing. As the company doesn’t absorb prices, we get a Wii that is more expensive than a PS3 or an Xbox 360.

Sony may be willing to sell consoles for a loss again

With this pricing, one also has to wonder if Sony will be willing to sell its consoles at a loss, much like it did early in the lifecycle of the PlayStation 3. While both Microsoft and Sony sell their consoles at losses, it was reported that Sony’s loss per console was significantly higher than that of Microsoft. It did end up paying off for Sony, however, as this coupled with price drops are what allowed the company to stay in the console race.

Just recently, Sony has been counting down to its PlayStation event by releasing retrospective videos about the history of the PlayStation. The latest of the lot was a look at the PlayStation 3.

The video takes us all the way back to the first unveiling of the PlayStation 3, with its considerably large and monolithic design. We then get aglimpse of the first—and ultimately most popular—slim redesign of the console. One of the most distinct visual differences between the slim PS3 and the original one, other than the size, was that the slimmer one had a matte paint job on it, as opposed to the very glossy original.

We also get a look at some of the games that have made it to the system, and will be making their way to the system. This includes all the Spider Man games, The Last of Us, BioShock Infinite and Uncharted.

Then we get a look at the PlayStation Move, with all the new differences to gameplay motion control brought to the table. The Move was often hailed as being better for gaming than Microsoft’s Kinect, as it was much more accurate and allowed for finer controls in more action oriented games, as well as the casual sports games.

For more information on what to expect from the next-gen console, check out our PlayStation 4 rumour round-up.