No. This was a 16% price cut - and it wasn't accompanied by any major software. A 50% lift from the July baseline over the last two weeks would put PS3 at 55k / week for the final two weeks of August. There might be a huge initial spike and then a quick erosion, but I also wouldn't be surprised if PS3 ended up at 180k or something in the USA in August (would have been 120k-140k or so without a price cut at some point).
I did have the foresight to see how many PS3s local retailers stocked before the cut, so I should have a clearer indication of the lift as I check supply / stock over the next few days.
I'm also starting to doubt a X360 price cut this year. If I'm Microsoft my thinking is - if Kinect rebounds to huge figures again over Christmas we're wasting money by cutting price since Kinect sells X360s. If Kinect doesn't rebound, it might be impossible to match 2010 figures even with a price cut - so why bother? There doesn't seem to be much middle ground between those extremes.
It does look like the US market is correcting to European levels of parity though - we could see roughly a 6/6/5 split between X360, Wii, PS3 compared to the roughly 7/7/4 split last year.
People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge.
When there are more laws, there are more criminals.
- Lao Tzu
