Why PS3 80 gig selling out

[HyperionFF]

Considering how there won't be a price cut this year it will be very interesting to compare sales from last year to this year at the same price of 399$/499$.
The growth PS3 is experiencing has been definetly influenced by the lower price but the biggest reason is perceived value.
There are now lots of great games, key exclusives like MGS4 and the upcoming Little Big Planet, Resistance2.
Blu Ray is now a valuable investement in consumers' eyes because there is no more fear that the format could fail like Betamax did. The Blu Ray movies lineup will be crazy this year starting from September with the Godfather trilogy and Kill Bill1&2.
And last but not least all the services have been improved, compared to last year the store has now a cool interface, there is a video store, in-game XMB is a reality, there is an achievement/trophies system and even more services are coming with the Home launch this November and Life With Playstation.
So all in all it's easy to see why even at the same price sales will be completely different because the perception around the product is completely different.

The opposite thing could be said for Microsoft this year. Right now they're cutting the price hysterically, they are done with the hardcore consumers because these people have already bought the console, they need to attract the mainstream audience to continue to sell at decent levels but the only thing they have right is price. But price alone isn't enough if certain users just aren't interested in the product and you're not doing anything to really attract them other than price. Wii is selling like no one before at 250$ with an obsolete hardware, Microsoft with its 199$ Arcade featuring a much better hardware won't do anything special just like their 199€ Arcade did nothing in Europe since March.
And we had a first signal of the difficult situation Microsoft is now facing in the US too last month when even with the 20Gb Pro at 299$, sales stayed low.