Sony left Eye camera out of bundle to lower price

Sony has revealed it wanted to hit the $399 price point for it’s Playstation 4 console and had to drop the PS Eye camera from the launch bundle in order to do it.

Speaking to journalists at Sony’s head office in Tokyo, SCE CEO Andy House said that while they wanted to include the Eye camera with the PS4 console, in the end the cost proved too much to keep it under the $400 mark, and so it was dropped.

Does that mean the Eye is a device that buyers of the PS4 are going to miss at launch then? Apparently not:

Certainly for the earlier part of the lifecycle, the vast majority of the audience that we speak to tells us that their primary wish is for the full controller interface and there’s not necessarily a huge emphasis being placed on camera interaction.

Console manufacturers generally lose money on each console sold (particularly at the start of the life cycle) and then make the difference up in games, accessories and subscription sales. By taking the Eye camera out of the equation, it seems that Sony was attempting to minimize its losses on the console (and of course undercut the Xbox One by $100).