For the purpose of gaining marketshare, Sony should follow a similar strategy from Microsoft.

Microsoft is able to make a sub $200 version of  X360 because the new owners of the plataform have a great possibility of later on buying a propietary HDD and signing up for Live.

Sony should launch a $200 PS3 with this strategy:

-4GB/8GB heap flashmemory build-in.

-Faster BD drive. The PS3 Blu-ray drives are pretty outdated now. Also releasesa patch for games that have obligatory install on HDD. The faster drive would be able to handle those games fine.

-Make a HDD Bay that only allows only Sony HDDs to be readed.

-Give 1 or 2 months of free PSN Plus. That would be a incentive for two things: buying a subscription, and buying a Sony HDD.

-Improve the $300 version. More USBs, Memory Stick support, maybe even PS2 emulation. Also releases new Colour(like the japan's silver and white PS3s) in order of making the $300 version looking Premium.

-???

-Profit!

They should continue to focus on decreasing the costs involved in producing the standard PS3 so they can offer it at a lower price with similar or better margins as appropriate.

2012 will see a $200 PS3.

All great Ideas but I think its about time to stop thinking about hardware revisions and focus on the games, something they're doing very well right now. Maybe they will do some of these things for PS4

4-8 gig of memory? Dumb idea considering all the installs and such.

Yeah... I've got 80 GB, and I have to make it work... Deleting installs when I'm not playing a certain game (thank you UC2 for not requiring them) and, you know what?

I can't even play MGS4...  That would suck, because no 4GB PS3 would even allow you to play MGS4.. And, sure, I know there's other games, but... I'm sure many would give you the same issues...

Luckly for me, I play Mostly Marvel Vs. Capcom 2...  And, I wont be getting 3...

But, the 4GB thing would be entirely useless...  Eventually... when I get my 2nd PS3, I'm getting 3TB on that thing.

I think propietary HDD would be dumb as hell, that would just add R&D costs and it might not succeed anyway, I think the idea of faster BD drives is good, but patching games with only 4-8 gigs of internal memory on the console would not be a good idea :/

I kinda agree, releasing a cheaper SKU would be a good idea, just having the base unit with practically no memory, and the customer having an option to either buy the official Sony hard drive or a custom one. Chances are the main SKU is on the point of reaching the price of $200, by the end of 2012 no doubt, so it's a bit late this late in the cycle.

They coull easily release a $200 PS3, but don't expect acceptable results on the financial reports

And I don't think the Sony audience will take paying for all their extra stuff in a good way

Agreed it will be a sales booster once PS3 drops in price again.  Unfortunatly some of your suggestions really dont help reduce the cost, only inclrease.  Adding additonal USB ports, PS2 emulation, different colors, incrased Blu-Ray drive speed?

I agree most of your argument is how adding appealing ameneties will help sell to the consumer, but certainly is not a good approach for Sony if cost saving is a goal.  The 4/8 GB disk is a good way to save money, but fragment your userbase in an unproductive way.  Xbox 360 already fragmented their userbase by offering the arcade versions with no hard disk, which frustrated developers as they could not assume that everyone will have a hard drive.

I think it is way to far in the console's life to even consider anything like what you suggest. Micosoft did all that when the x360 was relatively  "young", giving developers time to create games for diskless and HDD capable x360s.

Apart from add-ons any new major revisions is pretty pointless IMO when the console is half way through it's life.

As superchunk said concentrate on reducing cost of the current console and don't waste money on redeveloping or re-arranging it's hardware.

To be honest I think if Sony did what you suggested they would probably loose marketshare than gain it.

One of the strong selling points of the PS3 is that online gaming is free and you can drop your own HDD in it.

If they just copied MS and did as you said a new gamer looking for a console to get into gaming might as well buy the x360 because the PS3 offers no other advantages...apart from BR.