Sony could use those first two years to release their first party titles before dropping to 400$ and looking at how many 1st party games that has sold over a million for the PS3, I think the PS4 can get some support from their fanbase to support them if they provide the quality they want. 

And are you sure Sony still wants to be first after this generation? It might be too much trouble for them to shoot from 3rd place to 1st place. Of course Nintendo did it with a much worse place in last place than the PS3, but unlike Sony, Nintendo had a healthy profit from the GameCube, GameBoy, and DS. Sony may want to use this next generation to rebuild their game division with profits from their game division before pulling a Nintendo. Plus consumers wouldn't be too surprised or upset if the PS4 releases for 600$ if it has its quality 1st party sequel from the PS3 and many multimedia features, but not enough to make it sell for a lost. They might even be upset or disappointed if PS4 wasn't a tecnhological beast like PS3 was compared to the PS2.

because hopefully  the PS4 won't have to bare the burden of showcasing new and expensive tech that in the case of Bluray benefited other Sony segments at PS3's expense and the same with the Cell it was meant to be the chip that would be found in most of today's appliances and be the center piece of the networked home but it delayed the console and outside the PS3 seems to be a relative failure.

well... it wasn't selling well at all at the start.... why would they purposefully not want to sell well at the start again? only this time, they won't necessarily have the blu-ray as a good of a reason to buy it!

And maybe, if they can start off well again... they could be in first place again.

Rather than the best 3rd place ever? And Next Gen they won't be coming off... highest selling console in histroy. They'll be coming off of  best 3rd  place (Maybeeee 2nd) in the console race.

Survival instinct?

They won't be launching PS4 off the back of the biggest selling home console in history with a 70% market share.

I hope there is no PS4 ever released, but if it is I hope it is priced at least at $600. That would hopefully be quite funny.

If Sony continues their strategy from this gen that has reportedly lost them an obsene amount of money and seen their market share plummet, well .... they would be idiots

Sony realizing that $599 is the sole reason they're in third place this gen?

Of course Sony wants to be in 1st place next generation, suggesting anything else is really strange imo.

If they release an expensive console it will be because they would be forced to do so. This gen they pushed out Blu-Ray and the entire development of the cell processor forcing them to launch at $600, as the console cost much more to produce and they were loosing money on each unit sold.

If they are already locked into what next gen features the PS4 will have, and Nin and MS launch early, they will almost have to put the PS4 out at at least $600, that is assuming the PS4 is significantly more advanced than the PS3. (with that said, I do not expect this scenario to happen)

I think the two- tier approach for console launches has its advantages. I fully expect the PS4 and 720 to focus their "tiers" on being the hardcore more expensive unit and the casual friendly introductory model.

the specifics of these consoles can be saved for another thread.

But I wouldnt be suprised if Sony's baseline PS4 model was $400 at launch, and the Elite PS4 launched at $500.

SONY launching the PS4 at any price point above $399 would be insanely stupid. 

 Consumers are price sensitive and next-gen SONY won't the advantage of new technology to use to justify the value angle. Besides it makes no sense to give your competitors a chance to force you out of the market, therefore competitive pricing is only natural... (and Nintendo's Wii2 will probably be $249 or $299, with Next-box $399 at launch)

In one word: history.

They won't be enjoying the same market position they had with the PS2, and any delusions that SCE can sell their new console for whatever price they want should have long left the building.

Assuming SCE doesn't try to reinvent the wheel again and instead build off the current platform (updated CBE, current GPU, reasonable amount of both system RAM and VRAM), there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to keep both R&D and more importantly, production costs to a minimum.

As the general consensus seems to agree, any price over $399 is simply asking for a repeat of the initial reception of the PS3. Initial game catalog really can't change that either as they will still be first year efforts on a new platform.

More focus should be placed on online services and content distribution, which is essentially a given. Depending on how the tail end of the current generation swings, more emphasis may be placed on alternate control schemes as well rather than just the tried and true gamepad.

This.