You can bet your bottom dollar, Sony is making a profit on that 299 ps4. No way would they take a loss. So that suggests the ps4 production costs have gone way down. The perks of a cerny San machine coupled with massive sales that make the device very economical.
PS3 was a disaster and could never get down to a cheap price. How low can Ps4 go? I'd say 159$.
Regardless gaming is getting cheap both console and pc.