When does Sony reach the point of no return in Japan?

[Steve 3.2]

I'm going to ignore the 'fanboyism' and just add my two cents on the original question. It's definitely too early to call this race in Japan. Sony has a number of issues to deal with and has at least another year to get it right. First and foremost, they need to create a compelling 'story' for why people should be buying their console. Nintendo has the 'unique' controller and fun for all ages angle. Microsoft has their hardcore video game players. Sony needs to figure out what the PS3 really is and market it accordingly. Is it a multimedia hub, a video game machine, a computer? It's a similar problem they have with the PSP. Jack of all trades, master of none. Secondly, they need to quickly get the machine to a mass market price. I think that Sony did not intend for the PS3 to be priced so high at launch. They just added too much to the system and ended up with a huge bill of materials. Removing the PS2 chips will certainly help as will time since technology typically gets cheaper as it gets older and more are produced. But I think that Sony needs to get even more aggressive to drive down the price. And finally, the system needs good software. I think Home is a nice mashup of Live and Miis. Sony may be the only company that understands the Web 2.0 movement right now. Combine this feature with games that really take advantage of the system (beyond looking pretty) and can't be done anywhere else and they stand a chance and coming back. Assuming that the PS3 manages to stick around and sell a decent number of units, I think that people are going to demand a system with higher resolution graphics and we may have a winner in the high definition format wars two to three years into this generation. (And it may not be either Blu-ray or HD DVD! Think downloads...) Unless Nintendo delivers an updated Wii to the masses, people may turn to the PS3 (or 360) as a cheap way to get and store such content. (Similar to how the PS2 was often used as a DVD player in the early days.) Even though the systems aren't bought to play games, they still count as a sale and I'm sure many will pick up some games since they can. But if Nintendo is following the Apple model and does incremental upgrades every so often, all bets are off. Feel free to pick this apart, but try to keep it logical and polite.