anything b4 Q3 will shock me.

They will drop the price in the first three months of 2009. And again before Christmas if sales don't pick up dramatically. It's at the point where Sony can't even worry about losing money on sales of the PS3 but time to start be concerned about the brand name of Playstation. They can't afford to be so far behind in sales because it hurts their brand.

It's like Nintendo, they were almost sort of a joke as far as consoles go for a while. They're still going to have a hard time trying to be considered anything but a family console. A company has to try to protect their image. Sony has lost a lot of the image they earned through PS1 and PS2. So they will do whatever they need to gain their image back. Lets face it, the first two Playstation systems each sold well over 100 million and at the rate the PS3 is headed, it wouldn't sell 50 million lifetime.

The only way Sony can change that is through price drops. We've seen some big name games come out for the PS3 and all it does is cause a spike for a couple weeks and sales fall back down. Sony needs to drop the price and do it as soon as possible.

I think the price drop will be April 2, 2009. If it is announced for April 1st, this could be a sick April Fools Joke!

I doubt anything prior to Q3 2010.

Come on, man.  This is not that hard.

They are losing money STILL on every system sold.  If they cut the price, every system that they sell will lose them MORE money.  The company has posted huge losses and has cut staff worldwide in the thousands.

What's the point of 'image' when you have no money to maintain it?  Its like going to buy a new Lexus and driving it around showing off for one month and then having it repo'd leaving you with NO car at all.  Sony is not going to mortgage the future for a stupid IMAGE.

Seriously, this is not that hard . . .

Yea except that Nintendo never sold a console at a loss as far as we know.  At least they have never had any reported a loss before.  If they want to be like nintendo they would increase the amount of 1st party games and think about a way they can tackle next gen.  If anything Nintendo has shown us is that you can jump from last to first very quickly.  Do you really think it would have helped Nintendo to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on games, marketing, and price drops for the gamecube and n64?  No, they were 100x better off just making a good game plan for the wii, carrying it out, and swimming in the billions of dollars they are making.

it won't happen april 1 09 or 2 wat i'm certain will happen is there will b a 299$ ps3 b4 09 ends

Cell 45nm mass production is due when? Q1/Q2?

This is how I expect them to do their price cuts.

Q1/Q2 U.S.A: Cut the price to $350/$450 to stem the bleeding in this region. They need to act here first and quickly, Others can wait because they do not have to move as quickly in that region. If they wait till the end of the year they may as well put their tail between their legs and kiss this region goodbye.

Q3/Q4 When they release their updated PS3s (Takes about half a year going by Jasper production vs release dates on the Xbox 360) with the Cell 45nm cut the price by $50 in the U.S and Europe for all models and reintroduce the old 80gb style backwards compatibilty and then keep that expensive model $100-150 more than the cheaper PS3 SKU and keep it profitable.

 Give the 160gb system REAL value besides the increased price and aim to be profitable with this SKU to balance out the cheaper SKU sold at a loss. If a PS2 costs $150 with memory card, then its justifyable to charge the PS3+PS2 price for this SKU. Include a memory card reader for free to encourage transition.

So at the end of the year, the price should be something like

$300 80gb/$400 or $450 160gb in the U.S and $350/$450 80gb or $500 160gb in the E.U (Euros not $$ lol, stupid keyboard)

I think a lot of people will announce PS3 price cuts on April 1.

I do not, however, think it will actually happen.

Nintendo has never been last place saleswise. There have been superior consoles to Nintendo's offering in every generation Nintendo has had a home console in, except the NES, that have sold less.