PS3 Sales Are GOOD.....SONY DON'T Drop Price!

[Millennium]

The PS3's sales are abysmal -at the level of many past consoles that people have no problem calling "failed systems"- but you're right that dropping the price may not be the answer at this point in time. What Sony really needs to do is start making money, so that they can recover from having squandered their entire PS1 and PS2 profits combined on this thing. A price drop can only help with this if the new price is above the cost to build each unit, and since even the old price is not yet above the cost per unit, the basic principles of mathematics state that this is impossible.

What Sony really needs to do is cut the cost to build each system. This is where a theoretical "PS3 Slim" comes in, but Sony needs to make sure that its price allows them to actually make money per unit. This is why I don't believe that the launch of a PS3 Slim will be accompanied by a price cut: Sony simply cannot afford to do that. This goes double if Sony actually makes the suicidal move of cutting the price before launching the Slim: whatever the PS3 goes for at the time of the Slim's launch, that is what the Slim will cost.

Sony is caught in a catch-22: they have to lower the price, but they can't lower the price. How, or if, they maneuver out of this will be interesting to see, but it will have to be done very carefully in any case.