At least here in north america since the thing is selling very well it seems like it can but what about others?  They had mentioned in the past that others would be their main focus outside of north america and if you follow the charts here it is definetly losing the battle there though not by much it is still losing.  If they wait until April it would be roughtly 8-9 months between price drops.  Can they wait that long? 

 I say they start the others price drop early like in February or they could do a worldwide drop at the end of February.  How about maybe do the drop along side Lost Odessey though would help that game gets get reviews.  It just seems too long of wait for late April especially in the others region it may get out of hand.

 In the end it may not matter since maybe MS just truly cares about north america where they have a stronghold.  I say they need to be more aggressive and hit up others sooner rather then later as though they will eventually drop the price it may not be as effective then. 

i suspect they are making about $50 on a xbox360
so pricedrop is affordable, the question is when are they going too use it now or on an optimalisation point

They can't wait. It is still being outsold weekly by the PS3. And if PS3 goes first, it will be even worse cuz when Sony drops their's, it's gonna be by a hundred, and MS is only gonna drop it by fifty.

The longer they wait to drop the price the closer Sony comes to being able to match it.

it's all about impact imo, dropping the price now wouldn't garner as much attention as it would if it happened during the gta4 craze. With games like dmc4, lost odyssey, burnout, turok, etc coming out im sure the sales will pace 'well enough' until the big bangs.

3-4 weeks before GTA IV would be ideal... anything sooner would lose steam, anything after would be useless since we can all expect a raise in console sales for GTA

I think they won't drop it until the beginning of April simply to make this quarter more profitable. I think we'll see a $50 price drop then. Sony might match it with a $50 price drop of their own considering how desperate they have become.

One thing they could do is wait untill gta4 but do a $100 price drop instead of $50 though I think a February or March $50 drop would be better. Also the more people become aware of a potential price drop the lower the sales in the months leading up to it. Do we think sales will start to go down alot in March? Will be interesting to see what develops.

MS won't drop a hundred, because they don't believe the PS3 is a real competitor. If that was the case, they would have dropped it, after both of the PS3s price drops. They see the commanding lead they have over the system and don't feel any pressure to do otherwise.

That is a good point.  I mean if they feel this way maybe they would just go with that they can get and as long as they are making a profit from now on it is all that matters.  They have over 10 million xbox live users with a portion of that paying it is a nice chunk of change along with the ondemand video rentals I am sure they can be profitable even if they lose market share overtime.  As long as I get to play gears of war 2 and Mass Effect 2/3 in the future MS can do whatever they want heh.