Remember that a "win" in business is defined as making profit, the more profit the better.

I think the 360 sales are still doing great.

- Sony predicted overtaking the 360 in Europe by ~ July earlier in the year and certainly wont achieve this.
- The 360 is very likely to catch up with and pass the original Xbox sales this year. - The 360 already has more million selling games than the original Xbox.

M$ just need to continue making sure that the 360 makes a profit. Even if it does not break even at the end of its cycle the fact that the 360 will have put together maybe 8+ profitable quarters together will show that if they could have resolved the manufacturing issues and avoided the RROD billion they would have made money overall.

A price drop will come but simply isnt really needed right now. The Euro price drop demonstrates the difference a price cut can make moving sales up from ~ 40k a week to 60-80k and due to exchange rates it this works better for M$ than a price drop in America.

Any price cut for the 360 will likely coincide with the release of the cheaper to manufacture Jasper MoBo. While the cost savings per unit may or may not be $50, the smaller die GPU and subsequent parts reduction should offset at least part of a price drop.

So if anyone has good word on when Jasper will start rolling off assembly line (Q3 for Falcon, going off past trends), I wouldn't be surprised to see the price drop right about that time.

My question is why should they drop the price? They've got great software sales, profitable hardware (at least on some level), xbox live subscriptions. Even with very little price drops in the us its still selling well. They need to focus on profitability. They've got enough hardware sales to guarantee that the ps3 wont be getting massive exclusives, everything between the two consoles will be multi-platform. Couple that with the release of GTA 4. Sales are going to increase no matter what the price is. Why drop the price to stimulate sales when sales are already going to go up?

I see zero incentive to drop prices at this point in regards to US sales.

 http://vgchartz.com/hwcomps.php?cons1=PS3&reg1=Europe&cons2=PS3&reg2=Europe&cons3=X360&reg3=Europe&start=38921&end=39565&weekly=1

A 360 price cut in the US would be huge. The 360 is actually popular here unlike in Europe. The US is far more price sensitive than other countries when it comes to gaming.

Microsoft actually has room to make a price cut, unlike sony which is still licking its paws from all the development cost and price gouging their hardware. Their investors will only allow so much losses before they bitch slap some sense into the company.

@MorgZ

You are saying PS3 not overtaking X360 in Europe this summer?

The European totals according to VGC (not inclunding others/others, which is not EUROPE, but other asia etc) are at he moment:

4,514,900 for PS3

4,829,411 for X360

A margin at only about 300k. With the PS3 constantly outselling the 360 every week by a large margin, and with MGS4 coming in the beginning av June, the PS3 will probably overtake x360 in July.

LOL we have too many analysts in here. Wouldn't you think if they really wanted to "clean up" they would have lowered the price BEFORE GTA4 came out? Besides the price cut in Europe didn't exactly crush the competition.

if microsoft cuts the price in the us , it would be over for the PS3...

Everyone here awhile back thought Microsoft would make a price cut on it's SKU's in America.

But they didn't and I really don't understand. Maybe they have something else under their sleeve and they have yet to reveal it.

It's already done and over. GTA IV is released and there is nothing else Microsoft can do but to wait till this summer and make a promotion or wait till Gears of War 2 releases this coming November.

Actually no it wouldn't. Both consoles are selling pretty good at the rate they are in.

Sony is doing an excellent job with the 40GB price point and whatever is left with the 80GB until the MGS4 80GB PS3 bundle.