Loud_Hot_White_Box on 11 December 2008
No doubt about it, the strength of the yen vs the dollar and euro lately, something neither Sony or Microsoft can control, is harming Sony's ability to price competitively w/ Microsoft.
Last few years the average was around 120 yen to 1 dollar. (So if Sony made a sale in dollars, they'd get 120 yen per dollar of the sale.) Currently it's only 91 yen per dollar. It's way hard to drop prices in foreign currencies when your currency is much stronger than the historical average.
By contrast, Microsoft's sales in yen and euros bring in historically more dollars than average lately, allowing them to agressively drop prices abroad.
