Skew or Screw?

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There are so many factors, too many to list, that no number of upgrade advisor programs can make things clear. It’s here where multiple SKUs are no longer providing diversity and choice, and simply confusing and over complicating what needs to be a simple process. For any given SKU there needs to be one type of installation, and it needs to be flexible and affordable for everyone.

The Games Industry is another sector prone to problems on the SKU front; problems that are rather more down to marketing than simple bad planning. One doesn’t want to pick on Microsoft again, but again it’s the Redmond giant that immediately springs to mind with the Xbox 360.

For all its virtues and I’m a big fan of the console, the Core and Premium pricing is often a source of annoyance to me. The Core edition lacks the 20GB hard drive, the wireless controller and the headset. Consequently the Core edition comes in at convenient sub-£200 price point, which is always a handy marketing angle.

Regretably, in this state the Core is basically useless since the Xbox 360 has no internal memory, so a memory card is required for around £20. That immediately tips the price toward or over £200, and even then you’re getting a paltry 64MB of space – just enough to store save games on. To do anything else, such as download demos, you’ll want a hard drive, which is another £70 or so. All or a sudden the Core edition isn’t such a bargain after all, with all the little peripherals all adding to the expense to you and the profit for Microsoft. Of course, this problem isn’t exclusive to Microsoft since Sony are at it too.

Sony’s PS3, which launches in the UK today, also has two SKUs with a 60GB version and a 20GB version – though only the 60GB is available in the UK. Apart from the difference in hard drive sizes, the 20GB version lacks the memory card reader and more importantly wireless support.

The removal of wireless is a particularly galling decision, and again it seems as though these changes serve merely to hit a price point – even if the demand or need for it is negligible. Moreover, regardless of this piecemeal attempt at budgeting the PS3 is still an exceedingly expensive console and no amount of rudimentary fiddling will change that. What’s the difference between prohibitively expensive and merely expensive? Not much.

This gets to the nub of my problem with SKUs. Accepted, in many respects SKUs are essential, but when they aren’t, it’s just a needless complication. Adding false value isn’t a genuine SKU, it’s just a way of screwing money out of people who don’t know any better and in my book that’s not good enough.

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