Sony has spent a good deal of money building the PlayStation brand. It has helped sell the PS3 even though it has had few games and cost twice as much as the competition. I'd say that the strength of the brand is indisputable. (I can't help thinking about my friends saying '... but is IS a playstation, ofc it's awesome' or somesuch)
The only reason I can see for Sony abandoning the PS brand is if they, as previously suggested, want to do something that does not go well with the current image. Something along the lines of what Sega tried to do with the dreamcast (although that didn't go very well).
A funny difference between Nintendo and Sony and Microsoft is that the latter has attached the image more to the console names, while the Nintendo image is firmly rooted in the company name. Clapiotis was touching this point when he said that Nintendo was once synonym to video games, while later Playstation took over that role. Naturally this is in part due to the fact that Sony and Microsoft are doing so much more than videogames, but it can also be attributed to all gaming machines (to include the PSP) from sony and microsoft beeing named PlayStation/XBOX.
In short, I think Sony has to really do a turnaround for them to think dropping the Playstation brand would be worthwhile.
This is invisible text!
