Panasonic, the largest maker of plasma HD televisions has announced that they will be cutting 15,000 jobs and closing nearly 30 plants around the world due to the negative iimpact that the current economic crisis is having on sales. Recently Sony announced that as many as 10,000 jobs are being cut, with Samsung and Toshiba cutting more jobs recently as well – the latter also closing several assembly plants in Japan.
On one hand, this news sounds, and actually is rather dire. Times are not exactly good for these companies. But on the other hand, there may be a silver lining in the HD world. Though people have less money, and are more conservative with the money they now have, they still have the same desires, and will fulfill them if the price is right.
All of the aforementioned companies have only relatively recently began to seriously cut production, and all of them have far more unsellable back-stock than they find acceptable. Lack of demand demands that prices fall in order to ignite it.
Not only should we expect the prices of HD TV’s to drop dramatically over this next year, we should also expect for these companies to market these much lower prices heavily to those receiving their tax returns, and whatever economic spending packages the governments of the world dole out to their people over the course of the year.
Rather than the projected 2011-2012 for HD becoming fully mainstream, we may just be looking at 2010, and we have this dismal world economy to thank for it. People haven’t changed much, they still like to spend and have top of the line products. Most of them just aren’t going to go into debt anymore in order to be able to purchase them. The HD market is in the process of adjusting to this even as we speak.
Combined with timely price cuts on the PS3 and other Blu Ray players this year, the whole game may change because of this economic crisis. We’ll have a much better idea of what the full impact will be, and what decisions have been made after June or July. But those who are still saying that HD gaming, (and more specifically the PS3) will be choked out by this crisis, should broaden their view of the situation. There is a silver lining here, and for gaming, it just may be golden.
