the trend of being up YoY by that much will end in September when the slim launched last year. At that time it could be down YoY

You're making assumptions on a lot of things. There's nothing pointing that Final Fantasy Versus XIII, or inFamous 2 will release this fiscal year. LittleBigPlanet 2, Killzone 3 and Resistance 3 are big titles, but no bigger than Uncharted 2, God of War III, or Final Fantasy XIII from a system selling perspective. So you're essentially saying that Gran Turismo 5, PlayStation Move and 3DTV will move 2 million PS3s. It's not by any means impossible, but there's nothing definitive pointing toward it being true.

Yeah, it probably will, but if there's another PS3 price drop to 199$, one can only assume that it will have the same effect as the previous drop.

Dropping to $199 is a bigger deal because it's a 33% drop versus a 25% drop.  If it were $249 to $199 I could see it having less of an impact than the drop to $299, but going straight from $299 to $199 would be pretty big.

But I don't think they're going to do that.  There will definitely be a stepping stone between $299 and $199.

If they do decide to cut the price again it will probably be $250 not 200. But I doubt they drop the price again this year 2011 yes.

yes i have made alot of assumptions, you are right:):) but i think we shall agree to disagree on this one

and just to let you know my prediction for this year is 14m ps3's (which was made before all the announcements, whoops) i may have to update that:):)

The other option they have is bundling GT5 for $349 letting the consumer save an extra $10 would be awesome.

To basically copy and paste what I said in the other thread as to how I think they may meet this goal:

I think continued momentum from the drop to $299 will help a long way towards getting to there, then a drop to $249 in anticipation of Move plus the release of GT5 will help cover what they have left over.

Remember, the ps3 was doing pretty poorly last year at $399, and it is doing remarkably better over the start of this year. The ps3 has thus far sold 3.6 million units this year, compared to 2.6 million units over the same period last year. That's a 38% increase. Assuming that holds true through the end of August (release of Slim last year), that would see the ps3's sales increase from 4.22 million last year to 5.82 million, well before the holidays have even begun.

Toss in a small price cut and GT5, and you'll probably see similar holiday sales to last year, followed by a weaker first quarter due to a lack of anything on par with God of War and Final Fantasy. Given all this, I could see them landing near 15 million total - 15 million sold, but that'll translate into shipped.

So 115.6 million units of software were shipped on ps3 last year, as opposed to 103.1 million for 360 according to Microsoft's figures. That's a 12 million gap. Backs up what I said about the ps3 probably having more active game buyers now.

GT5 is not likely to be a huge system seller it has taken to long and is to far down the lifecycle for it to be a serious system seller. It will sell copies and maybe even be bundled but it certainly is not going to add millions of hardware sales.