A lot of people are waiting for the PS3 to drop to a more realistic price. In the UK the machine is 299 GBP.

I know a lot of people make a lot of the value aspect of the PS3 as it can do all sorts of amazing things at some undefined point in the future.

The biggest justification for the price is BluRay movies.
For me this is the problem. I dont watch movies.

So The PS3 just looks like a really expensive though mercifully silent Xbox 360.

Then we're in agreement.  I thought you were saying that MS might possibly release a $300 next-gen console in a couple of years.  Might happen, but I'm skeptical.

The consumer electronics industry is littered with the carcasses of companies who underestimated Sony's cost-reduction prowess.

By this November at the latest, the cheapest version of the PS3 will be cut to $299/299EUR, and PS3 sales will skyrocket -- exactly at the point that PS2 sales will finally decline. You have to remember inflation: $300 in 2000 money is the equivalent, of 3% annual inflation, of $400 in 2009. So $299/299EUR is indeed a mass market price.

By November 2009, the cheapest PS3 will be $199/199EUR.

I think some people have just realised without a competitive price tage Sony isn't going to win this gen, or take silver place when next gen begins.

Which doesn't matter at all, since N or MS can "start the next gen" whenever they want by launching another console.  What matters for the company is: how much money does their game line make (Sony'll make more than MS in the vast majority of years, as in the past....MS might win one year out of 5 when Sony happens to take a loss for its new gen), and for gamers it's a matter of: how much fun did you have and what value did you receive (did the manufacturer put out a crap product that often breaks, did you have to pay for online play, how laggy was online play and could devs try a lot of different formats with online play, did you have to shell out extra for wifi, does your console play HD movies on the winning side or the losing one, how long will the console be around with a very large stable of good games, etc)

He's been saying stupid stuff like this for a while. read his post history laugh and then ignore.

He's more worried in trash talking the ps3 than he is with saying positive 360 things

Except (of course) that people expect electronics to work in the opposite direction of inflation; the $1000 laptop from 2000 is similar to the $500 laptop of today, and the $1000 DVD player of 1998 is the same as the $400 Blu-Ray player today.

1) That's the greatest power of all, that either one of them could snap their fingers and reduce Sony to bronze with 2 words "Holiday 2009"

2) I imagine Sony makes a fair bit on PS2 and PSP and very little on PS3, the hardware losses are obvious with $3 billion down the pan, but here's something that isn't - Sony's has to bundle every single first party game to get it to 1 million, how can they expect to make anything decent on $20 million projects like Lair or Heavenly Sword when they bomb, or Ratchet, Uncharted, GT5P when they give it away for free?

Don't see MS needing to give away Crackdown or Mass Effect or Halo 3 or Gears (at least not until they had already sold millions). It seems odd for a company who touts their first party wares so much, no one seems compelled to buy them. And it gets worse, with Xbox nabbing all the multi-platform game sales, Sonys losing out on royalties.

If you want to talk just the 360 vs. the PS3 though, Microsofts going to make more money overall this gen, 5 million people coughing up $300 million annually (and growing exponentially) to play online, lions share of TP software sales,bigger & better 1st partyy game sales and bigger online marketplace even the RRoD write off won't change that.

3) Well thats only something the individual can answer, but it's all a race for next gen, to see who can set them selves up better this gen for next gen and that's important.

 It could be a bit optomistic to expect Sony to drop it that fast based on how fast the PS2 price drops went.  Unless it can find a bit more to pull out of the PS3 to help reduce costs.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS2#Price_history

• US$299.99 (October 26, 2000, release date) (CAD$449.99)
• US$199.99 (May 14, 2002) (CAD$299.99)
• US$179.99 (May 13, 2003, "temporary" pricing) (CAD$249.99)^[31]
• US$179.99 (August 18, 2003, official pricing)^[32]
• US$149.99 (May 11, 2004) (CAD$179.99)
• US$129.99 (April 20, 2006) (CAD$139.99)

So, in a year and a half, PS2 dropped by 1/3.  In a year, PS3 dropped by 1/3, including a model shift.  It wasn't until 3.5 years that the PS2 then dropped to 1/2 of its original price, and even now 7.5 years after its introduction, it is not down to 1/3 of its launch price.

I will agree that the PS2 had little competition, and thus Sony didn't need to drop its price after its first price drop.  And basically, they didn't, or not much.  Sony has more incentive to drop the PS3 price because of the stronger competition this time around.  But, by definition, stronger competition means it will be harder to sell as many PS3 as they did with the PS2.

Taking out the costs to go from the estimated $800 per unit to perhaps $500 per unit today is an impressive feat by Sony.  Now it will get much harder to cut cost.  After all, if the cost to build a PS2 was reduced by 1/3 every 18 months, it would now cost $38 to make one!