The pricecut shall come with the 45nm revision.

No price cut this year. You can quote me on that.

Did i say with a price drop? Look at the holiday season of 2007. Microsoft brought out the 'xbox is cheaper' commercials and could keep even sales. After the holidays it fell below for more of less 3 Q. But those first quarters are less important then the last one. Squilliam had a nice piece about that. >> brand - price in the holidays. link

Microsoft should still have room for a pricecut of some 25 - 50$. The company can always offset total losses with others profits (Microsoft has no debts, unlike Sony). It can always use that, if not combined with far better marketing than Sony can ever muster. Sony is pretty much drummed in a corner.

A price cut is a dangerous game for Sony. They can ill afford it yet its competition has no such restriction. For my money all this does is instigate a price war.

What if this price cut does not produce the required bump because the competition trumped your card. More losses on top of losses, not a smart move.

I think it would be a wise Sony who waited until after E3 especially as it is likely to be an old fashioned E3 monster then it may start thinking about a price cut around the christmas period were it will have maximum impact.

It needs to replicate the Perfect storm Microsoft produced during the last Christmas period.

My guess is that Sony is expecting its lineup this year, especially FF, to account for the 30% increase in PS3 sales this fiscal year.

All I know is EVERYONE I know including people who have long fought with me on the PS3 vs. 360 issue, is waiting for this pricedrop.

Conversations will go somthing like:

"X-Box 360 owns PS3! PS3 sucks I don't care about no PS3 I don't need no Bluray."

and I'll be like: "Looks like PS3 is getting a $100 price drop this year."

and they'll be like: "Really? I might have to get me a PS3 then."

I figure its coming in October.

I feel good that you predicted the same as me

I don't know where you have been living, but at least where I've been living (and the sites I've been visiting), it's been mostly about possibilites: April and fall. They have both been said to be possible but only rarely I've seen April been stated as certain.

Anyway, it's probably coming this fall. I doubt they're cutting the price before they have both a reduction in production costs (45 nm) and a big release coming up pretty soon. E3 won't do unless they have a huge surprise. And then we can also discuss whether it'll be $100 or not... With a $100 cut, they'll be losing tons of money more than they're doing now. Then again, 50$ won't work that well (unless, of course, they manage to promote it very well) and $15-$20 more than 50$ either won't be much better or will get pretty close to $100. Oh, and they also projected to sell 3 million more than the fiscal year before - I doubt Final Fantasy XIII and Gran Turismo 5 can do that alone.

TheSource sounds good so far.

If they are really serious about the 13 million projection, they have to cut the price ASAP...

Last fiscal year they sold 5 million between Apr-Oct, 3 million in Nov-Dec and 2 million in Jan-Mar. They definitely need a boost in the Apr-Oct period to attain 13m.

November is too late, since Apr-Oct would probably be ~4 million instead of 5, leaving 9 million left for Nov-Mar which is almost double of what they sold this year.

So August +/- 1 month would be my bet. This is of course assuming they're actually planning to fulfill the 13m goal...