...which is fine - it's not illegal. 

Just because it's legal doesn't make it right.

Well, how is it wrong then? 

i know personally sony of italy high level employes.

they think and believe that the real ps3 launch will be next year.

they (here in europe) think that mass of people consider wii a fad.

listen to theme is like listen someone that already know how the story will end.

when i tell them about japan numbers they simply respond that japaneses will leave nintendo as soon final fantasy will be released.

I don't know if they are blind or what...

they make me think that real price of ps3 is much lower than we think.

...$820 is low in Italy?

Real price? What do you mean?

Wrong is too strong a word. Very few things are black and white. But I do resent people who try to manipulate markets through subsidized products or exploit ignorance by trying to lock people into supply dependancy. Anybody who is selling products below cost is looking for power instead of profit. Obviously profit is the long-term goal, it's the use of power as a means of achieving it which I distrust.

Just like I distrust products which depend on massive marketing budgets to sell. Advertising is another kind of manipulation. Some marketing is necessary to make people aware of your product and what it offers, but beyond a certain point it becomes a kind of mind control over the hapless. A company which spends tons of money on advertising isn't spending that money on R & D or quality control, so I suspect the quality or technical superiority of their products and resent their attempt to manipulate me.

If "wrong" is too strong a word, then certainly "right", being the antonym, is surely as strong!

I gather by your statement then that you are a Nintendo fan, or only buy Nintendo consoles because both Microsoft and Sony are subsidizing the hell out of their consoles.

However, even Nintendo advertises! I don't know how much money they spend on advertising, but I bet they do their fair share. Nintendo spends on advertising, yet they do enough R&D to come out with something like the Wii remote. However, if it weren't for their immaculate marketing strategy the Wii remote could be another has-been piece of hardware.

Sony advertises everywhere. I never see a Microsoft or Nintendo ad over here (not the US) - only Sony ads. But! At the same time have invested millions, probably billions in Blu-ray, Cell, and PS3 - that certainly is a hefty R&D investment!

Like you said, things aren't always black and white, and in this case R&D goes hand in hand with marketing and advertising. 

Think of it another way: If Nintendo didn't attend E3 and didn't have those silly "We would like to play" ads, I somehow doubt the Wii would be the runaway success that it is - hardly anyone would know about it!

 Obviously, if I never bought anything which was advertised, I wouldn't buy much of anything at all. That's why I went through the effort of distinguishing between a reasonable amount of marketing and a product driven by marketing. Perhaps I should have left out the advertising comment. I didn't really intend it to apply to the console market in particular, which is obviously what you thought I meant. Products driven primarily by advertising tend to show up in other markets, such as movies, music and junk food.

Basically, my point with both subsidized products and advertising is that there are hidden costs in the products we choose, and costs are always passed on to the consumer. A company which isn't earning a profit off your purchase today intends to earn a profit later, and expects those future profits to be greater than the up-front profits it would make. Getting a product for less than it cost to make sounds like a deal which is too good to be true, and such deals usually are.

 You might have noticed that I'm ignoring your semantics-based arguments. That's because I find little value in disputes over semantics.

It actually sounds like at all levels of Sony's management they're in denile ...

I would be more optimistic about Sony if they realized how badly they had screwed up and were taking action to correct their mistakes; this belief that people will all of a sudden stop buying the (by then) less than $200 Wii and pick up the (probably) greater than $400 PS3 is delusional.

You can ignore all you want, but you still fail to explain what is a reasonable amount of marketing or subsidizing.

All I'm saying is that what you mentioned is simply not dumping, or Sony and Microsoft would have been fined ages ago - starting from last generation even - with their dumping practices. Right or wrong, it isn't dumping.