A relatively cheap PS3 Slim is inbound. Let's talk Microsoft's response.

[NightDragon83]

WereKitten said:

NightDragon83 said:
Well with Blu-Ray players now starting to dip below the $199 range, the PS3's ability to play Blu-Ray movies isn't quite as appealing as it was when it first hit the market at nearly half the going rate of stand-alone Blu-Ray players. It's still a nice extra feature, but with the 360 still starting at $100 cheaper than the PS3 slim, it becomes all about the games, and right now 360 has the edge in that department.
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Weird logic. It costs more than cheap BD players, thus it won't sell to who wants a BD player, and it costs more than an Arcade thus it won't sell to who wants a console? What about the fact that it combines the two?

You can buy a 360 Arcade or with $100 more you can buy a PS3 that also has wifi, free online, 120GB HDD and plays BD. Let's say that your average customer doesn't care much about the cost of Live Gold, and only is interested in the wireless in a minority of the cases. Still, how many hard disks and BR players are you going to buy with the $100 difference?

I think you are missing my point... people who are mainly interested in purchasing a Blu-Ray player are going to opt for the cheaper stand-alone models instead of a PS3, so that takes them out of the equation.  Now people who are mainly interested in gaming will basically be split just going by the hardware alone ($199 360 w/out Blu-Ray vs. $299 PS3 w/ Blu-Ray), so the deciding factor for them will most likely come down to each system's game library.

My point was that with the advent of more mainstream standalone players, Blu-Ray playback won't be that big of a factor in the PS3's sales going forward... it's going to come down to the games (as it always does).  So it'll be interesting to see how the PS3 does through the holidays and if it gets only a small spike in sales from the price drop, or if it continues to sell as good or better than the 360 throughout the holidays and into 2010.