Sony: we are not gouging Australia with high PS3 price

An 80 GB PlayStation 3 in the US goes for US$ 399. In Australia, it’s around US$ 456. SmartHouse recently wrote an article entitled “Why Sony is utterly broken and why a PS4 is needed now,” accusing Sony of “price gouging Australians for several years.”

You know what “spits the dummy” means? It means a display of anger in Australianese. In Englishese, that’s what SCE Australia boss Michael Ephraim was during a phone call to SmartHouse.

An 80 GB PlayStation 3 in the US goes for US$ 399. In Australia, it’s around US$ 456. (Yeah, you think other regions already had it bad.)

SmartHouse recently wrote an article entitled “Why Sony is utterly broken and why a PS4 is needed now,” accusing Sony of “price gouging Australians for several years.”

You know what “spits the dummy” means? It means a display of anger in Australianese. In Englishese, that’s what SCE Australia boss Michael Ephraim was during a phone call to SmartHouse, saying that he is fed up with Sony being bashed for price gouging:

I am fed up of Sony being bashed we are not price gouging neither do we have regional codes in our software. I am calling in our lawyers as we are not in any way price gouging Australian consumers. This is misleading. We have to factor in exchange rates etc.

[…] I am angry I am bloody angry over this story you will be hearing from my lawyers. Just because Sony is making losses does not mean that you can print garbage like this. I repeat we are not price gouging Australians.

The “regional codes” comment was aimed at SmartHouse’s claims, which the latter had since admitted was wrong. Ephraim also had a couple of things to say when asked about how the PS3 is doing now that Blu-ray players are a dime a dozen:

So what that consumer’s can now buy a separate Blu ray player. What price do you think they will have to pay? […] So what we have firmware upgrades and consumers can access content on the Internet.

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Related:

• SCE Australia: No price cuts for 60GB PS3 unit
• Australia getting PS3 price cut announcement on July 12

Via SmartHouse