Yes, it can do it. But I think Sony will drop the PS4 to 199 again close to Christmas when the bulk of sales happen, so they could end up winning December too. In either case, I expect massive sales from all 3 companies. I wonder if this BF can't break some kind of record for home consoles.

Talking about the US here, of course.

Well PS3 5 years to go from 499-599 to 199, PS4 399 to 199 in 4 years... actually the first 50 and the second one where the slowest ever for a PS system.

but on the philosophy crazy Ken really wasn't much worried about price and profitability, and also he was looking to what he thought the dev environment should be so he didn't care about 3rd parties... that is why PS4 being so different approach was so much liked.

It isnt't. In the fy forecast reporting the Sony financial guy (?) stated that the profit forecast had been lowered due to "increased marketing expenses in the coming holidays" (paraphrased). You may be able to manufacture PS4s for less than that price, but the product price is higher.

wonder if sony could give the ps4 a permanent price cut in the near future...i think e3 2018 could be the time

Next fiscal year Sony should target making about 18m 1TB Slims and 6m Pros. Drop the price to $249 next year and $349 for the pro.

When the holidays hit cut the price to $199 again and $299. With that many produced you'd like to think they will meet demand next year unlike this year.

2019 should see the release of a ps4 pro slim an ps4 super slim. Pro slim for $249 and the super slim for under $200.

Of course the profit will be impacted if you lower the price and keep the volume projected... that doesn't mean it is sold at loss.

Yes, but the faster price cuts on the PS3 were due to the ridiculous original price. Before hitting 299 with the Slim they were in deep trouble. I also always thought that Ken's excuses were mostly BS. He basically claimed that the machine had to be hard to develop for so devs would take longer to use it at full potential and the generation would be longer. The truth is that they were planning to use 2 Cells and no GPU and when they finally saw that it would be ridiculously underpowered, they slapped a weak Nvidia GPU and ended up suffering against the 360.

Ken has a lot of history and was important to the PS brand, but the PS3 was the big mistake on his career,

Most likely they will. I guess they will try to keep the price high in 2018 and see how it works. But next year the price cut will be permanent. I wonder if 2018 Holidays would see a 170 PS4 or if they would just keep it at 200 and add games to a bundle.

I agree that Ken made mistakes on PS3, but the take time to use the power isn't really an excuse if you consider that PS1 and PS2 also weren't simple to dev for. Only at PS4 Sony concerned with making the HW straight and easy.

Anyway... besides PS3 being faster to drop in price, PS1 and PS2 also dropped faster than PS4 (and keep in mind that the regular price is still 299).

Ken made basically a similar mistake with the other consoles, but it only backfired in the 3rd attempt. Also, in the last 2 times the complicated designed did not resulted in an increased cost for the console itself, so PS3 had one extra issue.

Indeed, the PS4 still is a bit pricey (not so much if we factor in inflation). Maybe it is the high demand coupled with the new politics on console pricing (no more razer blade strategy).

I would have to agree that only on the 3rd time it bite him in the butt... but If I'm not wrong using CD player capability added some cost to PS1 and certainly the DVD drive of PS2 added cost (but both saw more benefits to sales).

I don't think it's pricey, but sure it doesn't follow previous strategy of price drop. Until 2016 we knew that if they dropped the price they wouldn't be able to keep with demand at a reasonable cost... perhaps for 2018 they can do it at 199 level.