This actually brings up a serious question, how committed is MS to the Xbox brand? If they drop the price by $100 without making some serious cuts to the production cost of the hardware they are looking a pretty sizable loss on each console. Considering how long they've gone without making money on the Xbox brand isn't it possible that MS just ends up cutting their losses and dropping it?

How long was it before Sony started chopping the price of the 3?

They can and should sell it at a loss(they are already selling it at a loss considering more than just the  cost of the individual parts). The earlier the better. The E3 should be a good place to announce the price cut which could be in effect immediatly after the show.

This is the second thread on this topic today, seriously if this news becomes widespread I can really see X1 sales fall flat on its face in the coming months, after all why would you pay $500 now if you can wait till the end of the year and get one $100 cheaper? It's not like the X1s 2014 spring/summer line up is packed so full of games that you can't just wait a couple months.
MS better make a statement about this, even if they plan to cut the price by the end of the year, they should just lie and say that no such plans exist.

I believe it all depends post-E3 in terms of sales. If it does, however, happen then this generation will be known of its reactive panic buttons. Either, the gaming industry has evolved where the hardware companies are clueless to said change, or they have lost touch with the gaming community. Perhaps, a little of both.

so very damaging.

Don't think MS is willing to sink so much money for marketshare, they could had obliterated PS3 if they cutted price to counter all Sony moves, but didn't, I don't see why would they do it now that Sony would have an easier time to counter it.

How can the article mention the leaking scandal, with MS supposedly having found the leaker, without discussing HOW they found the leaker?
Obviously, leaking false info to a suspect to confirm they are the leaker is the #1 way you do that, which means the leaks are not all true.

Regardless, if MS can reduce price, so can Sony. Sony in fact has an advantage as long as MS is bundling Kinect, which just won't have equivalent price reductions compared to microprocessors, and trying to change things like lenses seems unviable because the precise performance/data input will just not be the same. It was clear since before release that PS4 was more powerful, cheaper, and had a huge amount of hype - both worldwide and in the US market. If MS would drop the price, they could have done it then.

Seems like a desperate move if true... but won't change anything...

I'm thinking here how much the sales on US are bad to make a company cut the price so early.

If they do this I sure as hell hope they offer me something as a bonus for being an early adopter.  I dunno, like 50 percent off a game.  SOMETHING. lol