Not too long ago, the President of Sony's Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, was at Develop: Brighton, and he talked about his work at PlayStation while also sharing his perspective on the current gaming generation. During this discussion, Yoshida made mention of the tech firm's PlayStation 3 price announcement several years ago, with the company head saying that the experience was a "horrifying moment".

Although Yoshida openly expressed the dread he felt in regards to the PlayStation 3's steep cost at launch – early 20 GB hard drive consoles cost gamers $500, and those with 60 GB hard drives were $600 right out of the gate – the President of Sony's Worldwide Studios did have some praise for the hardware, or more specifically, for the software it hosted. For instance, Yoshida also said that he was proud to see ThatGameCompany make Journey for the PS3 and have it sweep all the industry awards.

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While Yoshida spoke up during Develop: Brighton to say his piece about the PS3's original price point, the current President of Sony's Worldwide Studios isn't the first PlayStation executive to express such an opinion. As a matter of fact, a couple of years ago, Jack Tretton discussed being made CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America just months before the launch of the console, and said that its price was too expensive at launch, which ended up hurting the company's bottom line.

Taking all of this into consideration, it's safe to presume that almost everyone was aghast when the initial price point was revealed for PlayStation 3, and it didn't help matters when Sony failed to provide enough high-quality titles in the console's nascent stages for support. Nevertheless, critical and commercial reception to PS3 improved over time thanks to a series of price revisions, Blu-ray beating out HD DVD, and the eventual release of several well received titles. Undoubtedly, Sony learned its lessons with the system, and applied it to making the PlayStation 4, which is currently dominating the competition as far as hardware sales are concerned.

Source: GearNuke