I can definitely see a Slim PS3 soon, can't wait!

I don't get it.

Why doesn't Sony (or whomever for that matter) just rush to make the 32nm Cell or RSX?

Why do they have to go down sizes in increments?

Couldn't they have went straight from 90nm to, say, 45nm for example?

either early price cut, or greater profitablity. what would you guys choose if you were head of sony?

Id say price cut, no doubt.

All this cost reduction....they better cut the price then if the 360 cut starts cutting into their sales

Sounds bad to me... since it was recently announced they were still taking a loss on hardware.

the problem is not the shrinking of the chips, the problme is getting a mass production for that process running. this is what takes a lot time, and for each new shrink many processes have to be improved...

there is no company out there that can mass produce chips in 32 nm yet. intel is running 45nm mass production atm, but not sure if any other chip company can mass produce in 45nm yet. first mass produced 32nm processors will probably not be out there before end of 2009 (and its very likely that itel will be the first company again).

also ibm is using a more complicated SoI  (Silicon on insulator) process for the cell so they are a bit behind intel and taht is probably also the reason why we don't see any 45nm cell in ps3 allready (amd also is not ready for massproduction with 45nm SoI process yet).

since rsx is from nvidia who don't own chip fabs, they have to rely on outside companies to be ready to produce the chips with the wanted process. nvidia is also producing the gtx200 chips also in 65nm still, while ati is allready on 55nm with theri hd4000 series chips.

so in short summary sony would probably prefer to have 32nm chips allready but there is no company yet that can massproduce them

It's harder to make a larger tech leap = more dev time = less units on market = less money. It's as simple as that. It's not that they can't do it, it's just it would take longer for them to develop and thus they would make less money.

Wow. That's a pretty big reduction in just 20 months.

But die shrink is just one of the ways to cut HW costs, so this will help.  And in 9 months HW costs will be lower also without die shrinks: if you are talking about a shorter term, well, I agree that for Xmas they can only afford a $50 price cut without costs skyrocketing, but given the current good sales, such a cut should help enough, if they feel the need to do it. And Sony could easily afford a price cut in Europe, where price is inflated applying a parity €/$ that largely exceeds VAT difference, should they do it they'll greatly increase their market in european nations with lower average income.

There's also this though, yeah they've cut down it's size, but then now they've got to retool their manufacturing process which will cost money/time. I think it's called a menu cost. Plus like someone said, there's still more R&D costs to shrink even more. That, plus Sony themselves stating they're after profitability, makes it likely we wont see a price cut until next year.

Though, I'd still say there's a tiny sliver of hope for a holiday price cut. It would help Sony move more units tremendously, and if they're indeed pushing enough SW to recoup the money lost on each machine, I hope they're thinking longterm enough to go ahead and cut the price.