No. Moore initiall formulated Moore's law by looking at processors, but the beauty of his law is that it is applicable to things that didn't even exist when the law was ratified by Congress :P

Such as the number of pixels of digital cameras.

Pixels per dollar based on Australian Dollar recommended retail price of Kodak digital cameras

Created from a selection of digital cameras sold on the Australian market by Kodak (Australasia) Pty. Ltd.

Typically the cameras have been basic models with no zoom as these deliver the highest Pixels per Dollar.

Graphed with a logarithmic vertical axis to show the linearity of growth rate

Harddrive capacities

As well it is also applicable to processors (obviously) RAM, Flash drives, basically anything to do with digital electronics.

Actually you are wrong too. It's oversimplification that it only aplies to CPU as in orginal he mentioned doubling the density of transistors.

And cost of electronic device is very dependant on the size of die.

However, the PS3 has lots of components, many of which had already shrunk before the PS3 was launched (not to mention the non-electronic components)...

To believe the PS3 costs $299 to produce right now is pure folly, it's not even up for discussion...

Yes, you are correct, it WAS an oversimplification, which I did on purpose. The point was in the case of a PS3 it only really applies to processors, as the law states "the number of transistors that can be inexpensively placed in a single IC doubles every 24 months". the big expensive ICs in the PS3 are the processors.

My main points were twofold: Firstly, that it doesn't automatically apply to all components of the PS3 (although scottie did point out some other electronics it applies to).

Secondly, that Moore's Law says absolutely NOTHING about cost reduction in current components.

It has indirectly, as if after some months (24 initially, 18 for a long period at least through the 80's and 90's, even less now) you can put for the same or comparable price twice the transistors on a single IC, older IC's with half the transistors don't exactly halve, but nevertheless drop in price. In my previous answer to you I listed some components that drop in price a little slower and the one that drops faster than CPU, the GPU (maybe because ATI-AMD and NVidia strengths are more balanced than Intel and AMD, and high-end graphics are optional for most users, so competition is stronger). While Moore's law affects only the electronics part of not fully electronic devices, like HDD's and optical drives, they are nevertheless affected, while other aspects of production cost reduction drive their other parts costs down. About BDD's it must also be said that there where initially production problems and shortages that drove costs abnormally up (other than forcing Sony to do that ill-fated scattered WW launch).

How much did it cost back in November 2006? More than 2 years passed. You can read here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3#Sales_and_production_costs that in January 2008 cost was down to $400, so $299 now is not unlikely.

Edit: just to say it again, I own no PS' at all and I won't buy one, I'm waiting for Wii to drop under 150€ to buy it, in the meantime, 99.9% PC gaming with occasional blasts from the past with the Intellivision (not very often, now it's at my sister's).

Pachter is a fool. I'm going to e-mail the author of that report to ask him to put more effort into his journalism, and stop using Pachter as the go-to man for analysis. Specifically because he doesn't understand anything going on in the games industry, his predictions this generation have been pure crap.

nobody knows the cost of the PS3, Sony doesn't release any numbers it is all speculation.  There are so many more costs than just the core machine itself as well.  Considering Sony lost 400 million in the games division last quarter while the yen was at 105 to a dollar I don't see how you can say that.  Where else do you think that loss came from?  I'm pretty sure just about every other part of the gaming divion besides PS3 hardware is profiting.

I seriously doubt it michael!

I think alot is riding on SONY's holiday profit or loss and how PS3 does over the next few months.

IMO April is a bit early for a price drop -- i would wait until Mid-May then drop the price by ~$50 worldwide and start announcing things for PS3 from then until E3 (announcements don't need to be big, just enough to create some momentum for PS3)