Estimates aren't exact and it will likely be cheaper to produce a year from now.

I don't think MS and Sony are opposed to taking some losses on hardware. Some losses could be a fraction of what they lost on 360 (RROD) and PS3 (The Cell and Bluray) hardware.

Of course estimates are not exact. I am reasonably experienced in the mass manufacturing industry to estimate manufacturing costs of consoles within probably 10-15% accuracy (I get lower values than iSupply, but whatever).

The ever so popular argument "it will likely be cheaper in a year" is completely false. It is true for an initial production run compared to later "routine" production runs. For example, manufacuring PS3s and X360s now is _considerably_ more expensive than it was 2-3 years ago. This is a simply law of numbers (and increasing labour costs everywhere, even and particularly in China).

As to who is opposed to losing money or not (and at $199, we are not talking about "some" losses, those are massive losses on a per unit base) is anyones guess. Sony obviously is less willing than MS, as the price of the PS4 in Europe has - after some short promotions - regularly been jacked up to full MSRP during the entire year while X1s were cheap all through the year. You will see it in the quarterly fiscal reports. My guesss is, as last year, record sales but profits will be considerably down (I think Sony even reported a small loss, not sure tho).

Sounds like someone I would argue with.

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I full expect Sony and Microsoft to go *lower* than last generation in terms of price, the Scorpio and Playstation 4 Pro should help increase the average selling price anyway and counter balance it.

Just recently though we had the Xbox One S at $250 AUD. Where-as a new 4Gb Xbox 360 was sold for $180 AUD at the same place, so we are getting there!

Considering the week after black Friday saw a small increase in software sold on VGchartz. I think its rather simple Sony doesn't have too do that to meet their target.

Yeah, it would definitly not be possible to do until 2019 when the PS4 chipset goes to 7nm. Porting the PS4 OS to ARM would be interesting though. I always liked the idea of keeping the entire Sony line based around a single chipset to make development easier, but perhapps it would be good to have there OS on both X86 and ARM just to be flexable. 

At any rate, it is extreamly important for Sony to get all of their devices running on their own OS. Android is a good place holder, but you can't rely on someone elses OS forever. They already lost billions on Vaio riding the Windows train, and they have lost billions on Android. They have to set themselves apart, and make their products creat long term profit.

Patcher and his resilience in making things go awry

Maybe it will be $199 for Black Friday and the Holiday season, but no way $199 will become the official price before late 2018, it's currently $299.

How exactly is it obvious? The current MSRP is $299 so that would be a $100 price cut. The current $249 Uncharted 4 bundle is temporary.

It is possible Sony could shift focus to the PS4 Pro later next year. They could lower the Slim to $199.99 as a stand alone only at E3, and Start bundling the Pro with games at the $399.99 price point going forward. 

I don't think they lost something on Android because it is a free OS so they don't need to pay anything for it. That's why they use it in their TVs and smartphones I think. 

I was thinking the same. Android shouldn't be costing them anything (unless there are fees somehow associated with running the OS on a TV instead of, say, a mobile device) and Google is happy to get the Google Play Store on those devices. However, I've never bought a Sony TV since the 90s, so I'm not sure if they fork the Store out of their devices or not. A true "Playstation TV" would be a really great idea. It would require some better-than-usual Sony marketing to generate a proper level of interest.