The PS3 has not been released yet in the US, so it will still be a while before it hit’s the South African market. I thought it would be interesting though to blog about the price of the XBOX360, which is R3699.00 for the Pro System (at Makro). Games seem to range from about R400 – R600. I thought this would be a nice way to keep a record of the current release price. This could therefore allow for future comparisons, for example; how the price is reduced overtime, as well as whether or not competition will have an affect on the pricing of both consoles. Perhaps giving an indication of when the best time is to purchase these new products.
Sure time of year and other releases of better technology come into play and the opportunity cost is going to be small (and a real study would be very complex). It is still something that has always interested me. The same can be said about Microsoft’s Zune player soon to be released vs. the Ipod (R2995.00 for 30GB).
Above is a graph on the pricing of the playstation 2 from 2000 to 2006. As expected the price has dropped over time, with it taking a big dive because of the looming release of the playstation 3 in 2007!!! I also looked at the price of the first 10GB ipod release in 2001 which was $499 whereas in 2005 the release price of the 80GB ipod was $399. But in the years between this the top prices have been around $499 for the top capacity ipod. Perhaps a conclusion from this is that technology prices for new release products are quiet similar over the years. However when is the cheapest time to purchase these products?
