Sony’s Scott Rohde, head of Sony Worldwide Studios Software Product Development says that the company was working towards a $399 price point for the PS4 for a long time. He says it was what they wanted to price the console all along, as far back as a few years.

Rohde says that the moment Sony announced that the PS4 would cost $399 during their E3 conference was an amazing moment for their entire development team.

Absolutely great. It was an amazing feeling. Absolutely. We went nuts. We were just like everybody else because this plan has been in place for years. Developing a new console takes a long time. With a goal that was set in motion about three or four years ago, we saw this at the February event about how we talked to all the different developers. You know, what do you like about the PS3, what would you like to see changed, that’s all real. All that happened. Our goal was to build the most powerful console at a price that was affordable and we set that target at $399. All the great engineers in Japan, Mark Cerny was leading all those teams, everything all came together. The developers said what they wanted, eight gigs of the fastest ram available, all these things that developers wanted, still managed to do that in a machine that was super slick looking and still did it for $399 and that’s why it’s a moment we’re very proud of. That was accentuated when our competitors announced that theirs was $499

Concerning Microsoft’s announcement of the Xbox One’s $499 price tag, Rohde says there was a lot of celebration in Sony. He says they were high-fiving and excited because they knew this price point would make their new console look that much better.

As soon as it was announced there was running up and down the aisles, “woohoo!”. That’s going to make our announcement that much better.”

It sounds like Rohde and company were doing everything right in their PS4 planning. The $399 price point wasn’t expected but Sony worked hard to get the PS4 there. I think plenty of people would have had no problem paying $449 or even $499 for the PS4 at launch. Sony chose not to exploit these loyal adopters and still price the console as low as they could do so.

What do you think of the $399 PS4 price point? Let us know in the comments section below.