- Internet polls are virtually useless due to multiple voting, possible tampering, etc.

- A tech site poll represents an extremely skewed demographic.

- Intent to purchase polls are even more useless than internet polls. It's easy to say "yes" to anything, a lot harder to put your wallet where your mouse finger is.

If you want real information on how the public will react to a price cut, your best bet would be to look at previous systems and their sales spikes after price drops. There is enough data on the subject to at least get a good idea of how the market will react to a $200 PS3.

Better than an internet poll, anyway. Throwing darts at a board blindfolded will often turn out more accurate results than your average online poll. 

In 2009 with the launch of mega-blockbuster PS3 exclusives: GT 5 and FF XIII. Both of those games will sell a huge amount of consoles at the attractive price of $299 US. By the end of 2009 PS3 to be reduced to $249 US, further increase console sales with more games being released on PS3. Another price cut to follow late 2010 dropping down to $199 US, increasing sales again.

 250$ COULD be intresting, especially if coupled with FFXIII. However, I'm pretty sure we'll get royally screwed here in europe and that the price will be 250 euros, even if that equals more than 380$

Seriously, if a company wants to make it big in europe they should learn to use conversion rates... 

I can easily see the PS3 reaching that price point, but the Xbox 360 will reach it much faster thanks to it's lack of Blu-Ray. It will be too late and pretty much useless for both... see the Gamecube and Xbox.

Europe has huge taxes like VAT. So don't blame companies for all the high prices, blame your government.

19% here in Germany 19.6% in France where i used to live until last year

How does that account for the 100$ gap? (yeah its a 100$ if you add taxes on the us version, the eu version comes with taxes included)

The fact is that regionalization screws EU big time, most companies seem to think that a crappy translation entitles them to charge outrageous prices (don't even get me started on the prices of windows in France) 

Having a background in computer engineering, I'm intimately familiar with Gordon Moore's Law.

What I was referring to was that there appears to be a trend where each generation of console seems to start at a higher price than the previous generation.  Unless I'm mistaken, the Wii is more expensive than the initial price of the gamecube, the 360 launched at a higher price than the original Xbox, and the PS3 definitely launched at a much higher price than the PS2.  This probably has something to do with the increasing sophistication (instead of just increasing speed) of each console.  For example, wireless is built into the current PS3s, but wasn't included in the PS2s.  Taking PCs as an example, the PC a hobbyist *really* wants is still over $2000, so Moore's Law seems to dictate that newer components can cost the same but double in complexity every 18 months, not that newer components can double in complexity AND be lower costs every 18 months.

So while I would love to have a 720 or whatever for $300, I just can't see it happening if MS continues to try and push the envelope of what the hardware is capable of.

Nintendo is the obvious exception here... but they're weird.

The drop in the dollar's worth hinders rapid pricecuts for the US by foreign companies. With regard to price do however consider much higher local taxes in Europe, addition costs related to the market being less uniform than the US (also offices and headquarters in most European countries) and additional efforts for things like localizations. I am sure this additional effort by Sony such as translating voice acting into French, German, Spanish and even minor languages like Dutch and Swedish (which IMO is overkill considering the bulk of Swedes and Dutch people understand English very well, maybe even prefer English) helps them with console sales for Europe.

One thing that I personally wonder is what the long term impact of releasing a lot of these games will be ...

Metal Gear Solid 4, Final Fantasy XIII, Gran Turismo 5, and Grand Theft Auto 4 will all be released at a time when the PS3 is still priced too high for a large portion of gamers; at the same time a large portion of people who are currently buying a PS3 are doing so for the anticipation of the release of these games. When these games finally are released their will be an immediate boost in sales, but there will also be a massive reduction in the quantity and quality of upcomming projects which means there will be a reduction in the number of people buying the system for anticipated titles.

Basically, if you look at the N64 as an example, lots of people bought a N64 early on because of the eventual release of the Legend of Zelda (and several other titles) but a few months after its release the impact of the release of The Legend of Zelda was (essentially) over and now new games had to "carry the load" ...

Heheh, I thought you were a tech guy. Couldn't remember for sure, though.

In any case, I was talking about pure hardware costs and limitations on tech for a certain price point. Factoring in what the market will bear and profit/loss wasn't where I was going with my point. That's an entirely different ball of wax.