@ssj12

That just obviously isn't true. Why would they confirm a price cut 7 MONTHS before it was going to happen. That would seriously dent the PS3's sales this christmas. They would only confirm a price cut a few weeks before it will actually happen.

It will get below. It has too... the Sony guys HAVE to know that's where most the sales happen. If not i give the sony marketing research guys less credit then a bunch of 300 level marketing students and I don't understand whose idea it was to make the PS3 such an overexpensive beast instead of making it more reasonable.

Well unless there is some vast market plan i don't get, since the Blu-ray push didn't need the cell at all.

Fixed costs. You can only reduce the price to manufacture by so much.

I don't expect to see the PS3 at $199 in 2010. I expect $499 for this holiday, $399 for 2008, and after that we will almost certainly see smaller cuts. By 2010 we might see the PS3 selling between $249 and $299.

Price cuts are never linear, they always approach an asymptote. If you could really cut the price by the same amount year after year, eventually you'd be paying people to take your console.  In general, the amount you can afford to cut the price decreases year after year.

Yes, I expect the price to drop dramatically in the next few years from production increases.

It must get under $200 before the next console from MS is released, or Sony will be in real trouble. And if Nintendo's next console has PS3 level performance or higher, WiiMote 2.0 and a $250 price tag...it won't be pretty.

It will be interesting to watch how they'll manage, but I think the PS3's timing, price and sales creates a lot of problems both for its own future and for the PS4.

 QFT

Sqrl, in regard to how fast the cost of production will drop:

Have you taken into account how bleeding-edge the PS3's technology was? Sure, the PS2 had a DVD drive, but other than that it had nothing to really brag about AFAIK. Blu-ray was even newer and more expensive at PS3 launch than DVD was at PS2 launch, and it also had the Cell etc. (Whether or not the architecture is hard to exploit for games, it's hard to deny that it was a lot more powerful than the PS2 stuff was for its time -- or so I've been given to understand.)

I think we can definitely expect the PS3 to hit $250. After that, I think it will manage to get down to $225 before the next consoles come out, and that it may or may not reach $200.

Sony's PlayStation 3 will not drop below $200.00 US in this generation, at the very least until Microsoft and Nintendo's next console releases. It may not reach $200 ever. The losses are simply too heavy.

It will definitely be that low and probably lower too. There's no way a console is gonna be 300 dollars at the end of a generation. The cost of making the console decreases massively as the years go by and price drops are possible.

To those saying that it won't happen pointing to the PS2, that has absolutely nothing to do with the PS3's price drops. PS3 will have more price dropping because there is more to drop, simple. It's not that they didn't drop the PS2 price further because they couldn't, it's because they didn't want to.

The PS3 came out with tech that was really expensive (blu ray player specifically) this tech has already dropped in price in a huge way this year (blu ray players have fallen to half the price they used to be), the price will drop significantly over time.

 I agree but the end of PS3 life would be like 6-8 years? By then Wii will be 99$ and Xbox360 150$ for sure; not to mention maybe Wii2 (if it will have been replaced) 250$. IMO Sony doesn't need to severely lower the cost; everyone knows that by buying a PS3 he gets the most powerful and gadget-y console ever; they need to persuade us that it's the future. That's it's an essential purchase.