@CGI-Quality

At the entry level price the console would not have survived the first year. Thus Sony was forced to cut the price in many markets by a third. They did not do it, because they wanted to. They had no option either they had a radical price reduction or the console would have been one of those one year consoles that litter the console battle ground. The console did not do well for the price. It did well for having massive price cuts.

Not really strange, the average price of computers have fallen over the years, especially laptops.

I think even more people are in denial about how long the bad economy will last.

The real irony is that I was saying how the PS3 would be drastically effected by the bad economy months ago. And there were rabid PS3 fans who insisted that would not happen.

I'd argue that they tried to take advantage of the Brand to support thier other sales initiatives.  And to that end I'd agree with you the Playstation brand name is (to some extent was) a super-powerful brand name and probably one of a very few that could make the mistakes they have and still be in contention to have a modicum of success this generation.

That being said, it's quite a shame we don't know what a blu-ray less 399.99 PS3 and a RROD-less 399.99 XBOX360 would have done this generation.  I honestly think those two factors (cost and reliability issues) have hurt the respective platforms the most.

It doesn't matter if it's bad economy or competitors offer lower price. It's never good to be down YOY while the competitors are up YOY during holiday season. It would be better if Sony is making money which is also not the case.

Investors are not going to care why Sony is doing bad. What's important to them is the results that PS3 is down YOY and Sony is losing money. Sony needs a new strategy for the current market, not just for PS3 but for the whole product lines.

I guess it's doubly ironic that they are still denying it...

The problem Sony faces now, and it affects the coverage, is perception based on how it is doing in contrast to Microsoft in Nintendo in the home console business. It is more sensitive to this that Nintendo or Microsoft would be, because it was the top console maker last generation. The fact it fell to third, and is facing a stiff challenge to end up being even second due to it going up against Microsoft, doesn't help it. Sony's margins are must smaller, and anything that may take awhile to turn things around (Home) are judged within the initial few months.

And, in regards to people bashing this assessment, because UBS lost money, and thus the analyst who works for them must also be clueless, then using that reasoning everyone who posts here is also full of it because of predictions by the likes of CrazzyMan.

FishyJoe, supposing the worst case scenario for the PS3 doesn´t happen (discontinued), and making a 'guestimation' along with some logic, what do you think will be the worldwide sales numbers for the PS3 by the end of 2012?

Oh common colonel.!! do you really think financial Analysist from UBS has a bias against Sony??

Do you really think he's an 360 or Wii fanboy with an personal agenda?

There are just too many variables with unknown quantities to make any kind of reasonable prediction.