First off, I don't understand where people obtain this knowledge that they supposedly have on whether or not a company can or cannot afford a certain price cut and remain profitable.  Could you provide a link on how much Microsoft is making per console?  I personally have no clue whether or not Microsoft can or can't afford a $25, $50, $75, or $100 price cut, nor any price cut that Sony can afford.  I have absolutely no clue, and I highly doubt you do either.

Secondly, what exactly do you mean they can cut more than Sony can.  Sony will very likely be cutting $50 from their price in the near future.  Do you really think they are going to cut $75, or possibly even $100 from the console price?  I think you are crazy.  A $100 cut probably wouldn't even be that much more effective than a $50 cut would be.  Not to mention, a $50 cut now could allow for another potential cut in, say, a years time from now.  The overall boost from 2 smaller cuts split up by a year would probably be more significant than one large price cut.

Third, did you even look at the numbers for how far ahead Sony is this year?  Sony is up over 700,000 units over the 360.  The 360 would have to outsell the PS3 every single week for the rest of the year by 27,000 units.  If our current trend continues for even 5 more weeks (PS3 outselling 360 by ~15,000 per week), the 360 would then have to outsell the PS3 every single week by 37,000 units.  IF our trends continued for 10 weeks, the 360 would have to outsell the PS3 by over 53,000 each week.  I'm not saying any of these will happen, I'm just saying, that the lead is bigger than it may seem, and with the current trends, I REALLY don't see a change drastic enough to change this.

we did have the production cost back when they were selling at losse a couple years back... I'm sure we can find that.... but I don't have the time.... now it's pretty easy to calculate the HW price based on component prices.... and with a little basic in business management and economics you can speculate on their production cost....

that said I have no numbers in hand myself..... but it is quite easy to guestimate something believable from information available online if you care to dig arround....

now I read your stat... makes sens though we've seen pretty crazy push in pre holliday season till end of year.... depends on what's cooking up at each other marketing dept and what kind of communication campain they have in store.... it's gonna be really tough.... but not impossible.... not like the one about PS3 being in front of XB within 3 years people were throwing around back in 07... that was pretty crazy to even imagine.....

@Baalzamon - What endimion said. I actually made a very detailed thread on the production costs of Kinect and the 360 a while back, but don't have time to search for it right now.  Also, it seems you read way too far into my post. You are assuming that I implied things that I did not, such as the assumption that I think MS will cut the price by $100. I'm not ruling out any possibilities, but what I can say is that MS most definitely can cut $100 off if they wanted and still be profitable on hardware, while Sony could not do the same.

And please refer back to 2008, where the 360 was down by over 1 million, and after their price cut soared to pass the PS3 by 1 million. That's a 2 million swing starting from September onward, and with MS predicting to be the #1 console WW this year, that is even more evidence to support they will be making some pretty big moves to boost sales this year.