Its called research.... you can do it for yourself instead of listening to some random person on the internet or listening to some random person that works for a market research firm. Y'know on second thought.... your right.... these guys can't be wrong and they have uber inside information Just scratch my "think for yourself" rant.

What are you trying to say with the above? Anyway, how is Merrill Lynch a "random analyst'? I hardly call one of the worlds largest investment firms unreliable. And the fact is, their analysis of of markets, products, ect. is used by millions of people for making investment decisions everyday, so I'd say they have a fairly good grasp of how to do this sort of thing, as well as reputation to look out for. And Isupply isn't a "random" company either. Their name is fairly well known and they are frequently cited by numerous publications such as the Wall Street Journal and Business Week, and additionally has the likes of dell and IBM as clients. The thing is I'm sure your research has told you that Merrill Lynch isn't a "random person". But what I don't get is why your so adamantly trying to refute their cost analysis. It's a well know fact that consoles, excluding Nintendo, always sell for a loss at launch - of course I'm sure your research has already taught you that. But I guess you have some better source of information, and you must be smarter than people who work for a living doing this sort of thing everyday. However, I'm sure you wouldn't have a problem providing your research and reasoning to tear these people to shreds. Share the wisdom, right?

"A Sony spokesperson said that some of the pricing quotes used by Merrill Lynch are completely bogus, since neither they nor any other firm know the exact assembly cost for the PS3. And, that a PS3 delay is "completely nonsense." When we asked Sony what the price was to make the machine, we were told, "Sony doesn't comment on the machine's price," which is what we were expecting. In other words, how can Merrill Lynch quote pricing on components if they don't even know?" My Job title is Electronic Computer Technician. Take it for what it is worth because you don't have to believe me. I am just as faceless as these guys that are analysts. The difference here is I spotted several analyst issues right off the bat. For one they priced the 360's memory and the PS3' memory the same. Rambus memory is known for being notoriously expensive. So how does 512mb of ddr equal the same to 256 MB of XDR and 256 of ddr. That caught my eye immediatly. Then I began to look into this. It seems as if the analyst made intelligent guesses off of the hardware in terms of relative market prices, mass manufacture and bussiness deal reductions. The glaring issue seems to be it is near impossible to use that methot to gauge how much the PS3 costs. The majority of the parts were manufactured inhouse so the cost could have been drastically reduced for many of the parts. One thing I do "KNOW" is that the ram is not manufactured in sony factories where as the only deall they might catch off of that one is mass manufacturing. The PS3 does have expensive materials in there but after looking up the factories and exactly what was built in thier factories it seems as iff they are taking a loss but not one as high as either lynch or isuppli is suggesting. I could even hazzard a guess to say that they are also wrong about the 360 because MS has so many sister companies that I constantly get surprised when I find new ones to this very day. These same analysts, that are making predictions that are pretty much shallow and narrowminded were wrong last generation,( don't believe me? it is just a google search away) and there is nothing to say that they aren't making the same mistakes again.

I don't mean to be rude but... spaces are supposed to go after punctuation, not before. Sorry for being a prick about the punctuation, it just feels weird reading your responses with the spaces in the wrong positions.