At no point in what you quoted did he say they would sell it at cost. What he said was it would be cheaper than their $1000 video-player headsets because it's a game device.
Shu made it clear they planned to use the same pricing strategy as they do with consoles. This strategy was spelled out by the GameSpot author; selling the hardware at or below cost to maximize adoption and eventual software sales. More than a year later,
Shu reiterated it explicitly himself, again to Gamespot.
Concerning pricing, Yoshida wouldn't give a specific figure for the consumer Morpheus model, but said it's Sony's goal to offer the device for as low a price point as possible.
"As low as possibly can be done," Yoshida said when asked if there was a target price in mind. "We are not talking about any specific number, but this is a console business. We try to provide the hardware at the lowest possible cost so that more people can come in. And so that developers can make games on to create the market. So we'll have the same approach."
They will have "the same approach" to PSVR hardware pricing as they do with console hardware pricing; sell it as cheaply as they can possibly afford, even if that puts it
below the BOM, because they're gonna make it up later and then some.
And again, this is precisely what House then told Bloomberg; they will price PSVR just as they do their console hardware. They have been very consistent in their message, and not once did that message
ever say, "Expect it to cost as much as a PS4," so again, please stop claiming that it did. The message has
always been that PSVR margins would be similar to PS4 margins, and nothing more.
And nowhere in the Bloomberg article did it say anything like your quote, it just said it would be priced similarly to new gaming platforms (and that's how the media read the statement - all over are statements like "While House was hesitant to offer a price range he did say, “The unit will be priced as a new gaming platform,” so don’t expect a cheap add-on to your console.") If you choose to read more into than what was said in the article, then fine, maybe you have the actual text of the Bloomberg interview?
Again, not what it said. It said it would be priced
as a new gaming platform. Here's the excerpt from the Bloomberg article, since it seems you can't be bothered to click through and read your own damned source.
The PlayStation VR headset is on track for introduction in the first half of next year, Sony Computer Entertainment Chief Executive Officer Andrew House said in an interview at the Tokyo Game Show on Thursday. The unit will be priced as a new gaming platform he said, without giving numbers.
See? It's not even a quote from House, FFS. The reporters just tells us what House told them; they're gonna price it just as they do all of their new gaming platforms. Since we're clever guys — and again, Shu spelled it out to GameSpot, just in case — we know that pricing it as they do a new gaming platform means selling it at cost. Maybe even below, if they think it'll generate a bunch of software revenues quickly enough.
At no time did Sony
ever say its costs would be similar to
any other device, as you repeatedly claim. They said it will cost what it costs, and that's how much they're gonna sell it for, which is precisely what they've been saying since they started talking about the thing publicly.
Brenden Iribe is not Palmer Luckey's boss - the other way around if anything. Luckey came up with the idea and convinced Iribe to join him and co-found the company. And Luckey was VERY firm on the "for cost" matter, I don't know why you would suggest he was lieing to the press. You're right, it was over a year ago, and at no point since then did they ever go back and suggest that they were wrong, that it might not be released at cost. The *only* thing they've said since then regarding price was that it will be over $350, because they are using more expensive materials and stuff for a more premium experience (which is actually something Luckey has been saying long before Facebook got involved, that while they were aiming at a $300-$350 price, it might be a bit higher if they thought that the changes would make it a much better VR device for a first consumer launch).
Well, Iribe is the CEO of Oculus. Sounds like a boss to me. I'm not really sure who would outrank him here. My guess would've been Zuckerberg, since he owns the whole kit and caboodle now, but Iribe was talking like Mark only got to give input, but the final decision was his, and he wasn't entirely convinced Mark's input was sound. I know Palmer is labeled as the Founder, but I'm not really sure how much authority that actually carries. It sorta sounds like what you call a guy after he's mostly retired, you know, out of respect and all.
Anyway, I take it you've got nothing more recent and clear that they've said about margins? Just that one day of mixed messages?
