Yes, absolutely the standalone players will follow suit shortly there after, again providing a sales boost to the PS3 first (since it will again be the cheapest BR Player on the market), and secondly to the now cheaper standalone units.

The manufacturing cost of the PS3 has more of an allocation for price drops than any of the other consoles.(Sony manufacturing costs.. ie cell will continue to drop) Meaning they can make a profit on the PS3 hardware sooner than you think.

Also Sony is out to win this for the format of Blu-Ray at all costs. This is a topic that has been discussed many times. The possible revenue and loyalties from Blu-Ray far exceeds that of the gaming division, and Sony knows this which is why they made the PS3 THE vehicle to deliver Blu-Ray to the market, (at least in part).

Yes when considering only Sony's PS3 gaming division, the profits will take a while to become positive. This is all offset from the above mentiond paragraph as well as the PS2/PSP.

The PS3 can and will continue to drop its price.

YOU really don't get this..... Do you?

 Well what he means is that they should be in the black by august. Units costing them no more than what they sell them for.

With Nintendo claiming Wii will not be getting a price drop i think SONY will wait till late 08 before they use a $50 price drop to bring in those on the side-line.

Mircsoft will be forced drop the price of 360 in North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan soon(as in the next few months) or they will lose the growth they have had this year ...

Wii obviously dosn't need a price cut and Nintendo dosn't like dropping the price of their console anyway ( look at DS...)

I think once the PS3 is using the 45nm cell and 65nm RSX that would really reduce the prices of the PS3, enough that Sony would be able to justify a price-drop i would think.

They also have been reducing the prices of the other components so it wouldn't shock me if they started to make a profit on the PS3, once these changes happen, and then a few months down the line issue the price-drop breaking even on each console sold! That would make sense :D

Do you have a link? I totally missed it, and kind of doubt Sony said that, because that would be big news.

I want a link too !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Personnaly, I believe predicting a 100$ is not so safe.

The PS3 is not anymore in the red (PAL and US are both good, opposed to last year sales) and their gaming division is still losing money. Maybe they will now follow the MS startegy : keep the price high to earn more money !

 No, it effects both companies just as badly. Why do you think neither company has dropped the price in the US, even though they both desperatly need to.

price cut from Microsoft is more possible i think

 That's surprising. The last thing I read was this:

Colin Sebastian - Lazard

Thanks for taking my question. I guess as a follow-up to Evan's third question, I was hoping you could maybe provide a little more detail on the linearity of sales of the PS3 on a quarterly basis, assuming that the production level is pretty stable at around 800,000 units a month, just looking at the implied guidance. And related to that, to achieve profitability in the game segment, is it necessary to maintain the current retail pricing?

Nobuyuki Oneda - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Yes, we don't give the quarterly information, but I could give you some guidelines. The game business itself is pretty much the seasonally affected business. So therefore the second half of the fiscal year, we would sell more quantity than the first half. And the pricing itself, basically we don't disclose any pricing strategies for the coming year, but as I said that the... we don't aggressively adjust the price for the coming year. And to maintain the 10 million level of the quantity this year, I don't think that we really have to adjust the pricing so much.

Colin Sebastian - Lazard

Okay. But it sounds like on balance you are favoring the profitability over unit sales and market share, is that a fair characterization?

Nobuyuki Oneda - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Yes.

Colin Sebastian - Lazard

Allright, thank you.

Now THAT is a great post from fkusumot. Sound, rational corporate strategy wins out over delusional fanboy wishes. (I honestly think many people on these forums would be perfectly happen to destroy Sony as a company if it meant "winning" the console "wars" by selling the most units.)