The latest I have been able to find is iSuppli's November 2006 analysis, which put the 360 Pro at $323 sans controller and packaging.

Since that time, we have seen a few Playstation breakdowns, the latest of which from CitiCorp has the PS3 almost at a breakeven point (which I have a hard time believing, but weirder things have happened).

If the Pro was $323 over 14 months ago, what should it cost now? $200? $250? No higher than $250 would be my guess, especially since they shrunk the CPU process to 65nm. I'm sure the mobo revisions with less transistors is saving money, too. With the upcoming GPU shrink sometime in the first half of this year, that will be another substantial savings for MS.

I'm curious to know what some of you think... While Sony keeps getting this kind of news, things have been very quiet on the Redmond front but we know they're doing a lot of the same things Sony is... We see it in the hardware itself. 

I hope the price doesn't drop for a long time, I just payed $400 for a new 360. If it drops to say 350 soon then I'd be pissed.

Oh, it's going to drop. And I predict right before April Fool's.

Nah, the next round of drops will be in late summer. Then Wii might make its first drop since the 360Arcade will be the same price or less.

i would guess the aracde costs $190 - $220 for ms to manufacture.

I know this sounds strange but I think the 360 Arcade and possibly even the Pro will sell for less than the Wii.  I don't think Nintendo will lower the price of the Wii until sometime late next year.  It's likely by that time the Arcade and Pro would have had 2 price drops (one I think in April 2008 and another either at the end of 2008 or at the start of 2009).

My guess is that MS hasn't been able to cut back as much as we think.

The original 360 was plagued with cheap and/or defective pieces and/or messed up manufacturing (Who knows the exact reasons for the RRoD)

Upgrading to more reliable products and/or manufacturing would of cost them money, possibly negating any savings.

And on the cutback topic, I thought it was estimated (from the 360 price cut thread from last week) that the 360 is going to have a price cut just before GTA IV. My predictions where $50 in NA and $100 in Europe

There will be no Nintendo price drop untill 2009. They jsut don't have teh systems. If they do a $50 price drop and sell 20 million consoles in the second half that is 1 Billion dollars they are giving up. No way.

Maybe there will be systems on the shelves and demand will slacken after next Chrismas but remember people are still paying $129 for the ds and I don't think we will see a proce drop on that this year.

But you were takign about MS. I guess the arcade costs aroudn $220 and the pro $250. They are happy to be making money for a change so I am guessing when they drop the price it will be $20-$50 more than the cost of the system. So I expect $249/$299/$369 for the 3 SKUs.

The PS3 has had the advantage(or liablility ) of the Blu-Ray drive for minimizing costs. That itself was half of the costof the PS3 and represents much of the saving they have had so far. Also Sony is very practiced n this process from the last two generations. Xbox never saw a redesign. Also last generation the parts were all owned by someone else so they are still treading new ground on that level as well.

So the PS3 and the 360 Pro might hit $199 at the same time.

@gebx

Who knows? since the last earnings report (Q2) it was clear they were making some kind of profit from the hardware, i'm willing to bet though, that they are threading close to breaking even on hardware [+/-]. Sorta like a purgatory for the console biz.

Ya it would be interesting to see what it cost MS to produce the 360 as of right now rather than more than a year ago.