June 4 (Bloomberg) -- Sony Corp.’s games-division chief ruled out any immediate cut to the $400 price of the PlayStation 3, whose sales lag behind cheaper game consoles from Nintendo Co. and Microsoft Corp.

“We’re very happy with the price point that we have,” Kazuo Hirai said in an interview yesterday at the industry’s Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles. “We will move when we think it’s appropriate at some point in time.”

Video-game makers and retailers have said a price cut by Sony would spur growth in the industry, which has seen two months of declining console sales in its biggest market, the U.S. PS3 sales of more than 22.7 million units trail Nintendo’s $250 Wii, with more than 50 million units sold, and Microsoft’s Xbox 360, which starts at $200 and has surpassed 30 million units. Sony exceeded internal sales goals for 2008, Hirai said.

Activision Blizzard Inc. Chief Executive Officer Bobby Kotick, the head of the world’s largest video-game publisher, said console makers including Sony should have used this week’s trade show to announce a price cut. Nintendo has no plans to cut the Wii’s price, President Satoru Iwata said this week.

“I was disappointed not to see any sort of aggressive price cutting,” Kotick, whose company makes “Guitar Hero,” said today in an interview. “Of all the things that the hardware companies need to be doing right now, it’s recognizing the difficulties of the economy and pricing their hardware appropriately.”

Profitability

Sony doesn’t profit from PS3 sales at the current price, Yoshio Takahashi, a Tokyo-based credit analyst at Moody’s Investors Service, said by telephone today.

“Sony is probably determining the price of the PS3 by taking into account progress in cost reduction,” Takahashi said. “The PS3 hardware business hasn’t turned profitable and if you lower the price without cutting expenses, you’ll lose more money.”

Tokyo-based Sony’s games division posted a 58.5 billion yen ($609 million) loss in the year ended March 31. The business will probably incur a fourth straight annual deficit, Sony said May 14, citing sluggish sales of PlayStation 2 and currency- related costs.

Sony forecast it will sell 13 million PS3 machines globally in the 12 months ending March 2010, compared with the 26 million Wii consoles that Nintendo is projecting.

Hirai Promoted

Hirai was promoted in February by Sony Chairman Howard Stringer to lead a new unit that includes PlayStation, Vaio portable computers and Walkman music devices. The move was part of a restructuring that included 16,000 job cuts.

Sony is forecasting a second straight full-year net loss as the global recession forces it to cut prices of its Cyber-shot cameras and Bravia televisions. The deficit may widen to 120 billion yen in the 12 months ending March 31, from 98.9 billion yen a year earlier, the company said on May 14.

The PS3 has a stronger processor than its competitors and a Blu-ray high-definition player and online features that allow people to download games, movies and music.

These capabilities will allow the system to be in the market for at least 10 years, while Nintendo, based in Kyoto, Japan, and Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft will have to come up with new offerings, Hirai said.

Next year, Sony will introduce a motion-sensitive controller to compete against the Wii.

“There are consoles that are perhaps cheaper in the visible price at retail, but if you try to match feature for feature, then hands-down PS3 is the best value,” Hirai said.

Sony fell 0.6 percent to 2,640 yen in Tokyo trading and has climbed 37 percent this year. Nintendo dropped 1.7 percent to 25,360 yen on the Osaka Securities Exchange, extending its decline to 25 percent this year.

Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, rose 10 cents to $21.83 today in Nasdaq Stock Market trading and has added 12 percent in 2009.

To contact the reporter on this story: Adam Satariano in San Francisco at asatariano1@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: June 4, 2009 19:30 EDT