PS4 will and close to 20m machines shipped lifetime in 2014... they shipped ~5m in 2013... 13+ million in 2014 will be easy task.

They were in a worst situation during PS3 release... and do you really think they sold buldings to cut PS3 price??

About Sony not be willing to cut, there I can agree, it will depend on a conjecture of factors. The same happened during gen 7th, MS were capable of cuting but weren't willing. Now it may be sony time, we will discover with time.

This is fairly significant although early adopters dictating what their friends buy over say the next year or so is far from given. One could arguably say that the year lead the XB360 had over the PS3 resulted in a more robust XBL userbase during the first year of the PS3, but one could just as easily explain this by pointing out that PSN simply wasn't on par with XBL at the time. The cost difference was a hard sell as well.

Dropping the optical drive on the other hand, would have little to do with shaving costs and everything to do with being the sole distribution outlet for both software and media. MS would pretty much have to sell specific game voucher cards in addition to XBL money cards to sell retailers on stocking the SKU, but I'd be curious to see the buying trends on these. From what I would gather, the primary consumers of money cards or game download cards would be those who don't have credit cards (not an insignificant number) and a smaller pool of consumers who use them as gifts. 

As for other cost shaving measures; this was more what SCE had to rely upon simply to reduce losses. They had to shave $100 off a $600 console that was still costing them over $800 to produce in 2007. They saved some on manufacturing costs by cutting the PS2 Emotion Engine CPU, 2 USB ports and the media card readers and later dropped the PS2 GPU along with the CBE and RSX die shrinks, but they were still losing money off of every unit sold until 2010 if memory serves me correctly. 

MS, on the other hand, not only hit profitability sooner per unit, but was also able to avoid a series of price cuts simply to spur sales. The original MSRP was $400 for the "Pro" and $300 for the non-HDD "Core." Technically, MS only dropped $100 off of both the price of their standard SKU (just console with HDD; currently the 250GB SKU) and $100 off their entry price SKU (currently the $200 4GB SKU). Granted, the same money bought better and better features (bigger HDD, HDMI port, NAND memory, standard wireless constroller), but it doesn't change the fact that MS essentially only dropped $100 off the original 2005 prices, which is pretty incredible over 7 years. 

By contrast, the PS3 went from $600 and $500 SKUs all the way down to the current $250 and $200 SKUs. They had to cut MSRPs before redesigns and streamlined manufacturing processes could bring them into profitability as a result. 

We'll see how quickly both manufacturers are able to cut costs with new designs and streamlined manufacturing, but they're already starting from lower points from a parts/manufacturing cost standpoint. I've seen discrepancies on the BoM estimates, but I estimated the PS4 was closer to $300 before teardowns were even available based upon the reported builds, but I've seen estimates that have it pegged closer to the $400 MSRP. MS is always going to have the handicap of the Kinect 2.0 as an added cost until they offer a console only SKU. 

Nothing quite like fisting early adopters.

Sony should answer with a price hike.

A $499 PS4 with included hardware BC

I'd buy that in an instant.

Well if it doesn't have a blu-ray drive but a larger hard drive it could work.

Since digital games are *generally* MSRP for a majority of the time, MS could make a killing off the royalities from each game sold digitally. So if say the person buys 5 games digitally at full MSRP, MS is already making their money back. I'd imagine someone buying the model will buy more then just 5 games over the life time. Forcing the consumer to go digital is defenitely going to help MS with their future plan as well as their bottom line.

It would suck for those that want to re-sell or watch blu-ray movies/dvds but that's about it. Oh and Skylanders since they don't sell it digitally. MS just needs to be more aggressive with their digital pricing ala Steam.

I hope a no optical drive Xbox One does not happen. Buying games digitally would murder my internet data cap. Download a 250 GB game. Are you crazy?! If my internet were that good I'd be on Steam. I'm thinking a cheaper Xbox One could be subsidized by cable companies.

Drop kincet and 399 is a good start

Wait, what? Given PS4 would be $499 you think sales would be the same? Well, that's a bold opinion...

Aaron Greenbergs comment on the whole thing.

@TheAnchormanV No, you cannot believe everything you read on the internet..

— Aaron Greenberg 🙅🏼‍♂️💚U (@aarongreenberg) February 1, 2014