GameStop CEO Daniel DeMatteo has said that his company expects a price cut to hit both the PlayStation 3 and Wii during the third quarter of 2009.
DeMatteo said in a conference call to investors that GameStop’s forecast of 33.5 million hardware sales takes into consideration hardware price reductions for both machines.
"That assumes that there will be price cuts on the PS3 and potentially one on the Wii," he said, admitting, "it’s hard to tell if we actually need a price cut on the Wii to get to our numbers. There are some price cuts built into that assumption, but not until the third quarter."
The executive noted that companies will need to slash the price of consoles in order to meet sales forecasts for the year, observing the price of hardware remains too high in the current economic climate.
"The hardware price points, given this economic environment are potentially too high, and if the platform holders are going to make the numbers that they forecasted for the year, those prices would have to change.
"Also, if you think about it, these hardware prices have stayed up longer in this cycle than in any other time before, and in a very dire economic environment, those two things seem to be mutually exclusive.
"Put all those things together, I think that there will have to be price cuts in order to get the hardware moving to where it needs to be," he said.
Elsewhere, chief financial officer David Carlson nailed down launch dates for a number of high profile releases, including BioShock 2 (October), Tekken 6 (October), Modern Warfare 2 (November) and Assassin’s Creed 2 (November).