@bonafide

That will be the perfect strategy for sony, they wont be loosing money on the 80gb while its at $449.99, and they will have alot of great exclusives.

Im getting heavenly sword in 3 weeks, then saving up for assasins creed, and some other games, I wont be getting unreal tournament 3, I have warhawk for multiplayer. Killzone 2 is the main title I want to get, and I used to hate shooters.

Are you kidding? You think that at 450 they wouldn't be losing money? They aren't going to cut the price $150 is a year. You guys are deluding yourselves.

 Keep dreaming buddy.

You will be lucky if once the 60GB is gone, Sony even drops the 80 GB to 499.

Unlike your prior post, we dont know what the PS3 costs to manufacture but Sony is still probably losing a lot of money on each PS3 and money doesn't grow on trees. 

Sony said they will be making money on the PS3 by march, i'm pretty sure that is based on the 80gb PS3 at $600 USD.

When did they say that? The last thing I saw on the matter was in their Q1 financial report, where they weren't sure about it if I recall correctly. I also recall them saying "we expect to start making per-unit-profit later rather than sooner".

It seems that Sony are getting 80Gb HDD's for less then the 60Gb models. That with the reduced cost with the removal of the EE.

Not only do they make more revenue based on the $599 sales of the 80Gb models compared to the 60Gb models at the previous price of $599...but when the 60Gb are sold out and they reduce the 80Gb model to $499, then they are not losing as much money per unit sold compared to the 60Gb models as well.

So they:

a) manage to sell loads more PS3's because of the pricecut.
b) introduce a cheaper to make model (80Gb) at the original cost
c) once the 60Gb stock disappears, they reduce the 80Gb model, making it look like a reduction again...and potentially reduce the price further to say $449 so it looks like you are getting a great deal...extra 20Gb and $50 less....

I would say, that when the pricecut comes, it's 549$ with Motorstorm. Possibly even 529$. The pricecut could come after christmas, but in the other hand, Sony needs to push the christmas sales as much as possible to get back in the race. So, as soon as 60GB models run out, they should drop the price to the same as the 60GB is now.

@Vizunary: LOL, you're right, that's why people should buy new consoles. The problem is, that people sell their PS2:s to get money for PS3 and the backwards compatibility have more meaning in those cases. The backwards compatibility is high, but some games have minor and some major issues.

@Topic: As everyone have said, 80GB is cheaper to produce and even the 80GB HDD is propably cheaper than the 60GB. Since it uses the 2,5" drive, instead of 3,5", and since it's generally used in laptops, the most used size in laptops is the cheapest one. So, i don't see 100GB model impossible next year. PAL version propably skips the 80GB and jumps to 100GB.