Why would they have a price cut if the there two other consoles thats making them money are selling almost better then the console that there losing money on. Sony's probably happy that there not selling so many PS3s. They can just ride this out, until they can afford a price cut, theres no rush, it's not christmas yet lol.

That's a good question, but how can they attain the 13 million forecast without a big price cut ASAP?

I said this on another thread but... In the last fiscal year, sales went like this:

April - October 5 million

November - December 3 million

January - March 2 million

Let's assume they only cut the price before November... And let's be optimistic and say they sell 5 million until then like last year (unlikely since sales are down YoY). This means the price cut would have to increase sales by 60% in the November - March period.

That's what leads me to conclude that if they really want to sell 13 million, a price cut has to come well before the holidays.

That's a good question, but how can they attain the 13 million forecast without a big price cut ASAP?

I said this on another thread but... In the last fiscal year, sales went like this:

April - October 5 million

November - December 3 million

January - March 2 million

Let's assume they only cut the price before November... And let's be optimistic and say they sell 5 million until then like last year (unlikely since sales are down YoY). This means the price cut would have to increase sales by 60% in the November - March period.

That's what leads me to conclude that if they really want to sell 13 million, a price cut has to come well before the holidays.

NO PRICECUT COMING.  SONY STILL LOSING $40 per PS3 SOLD.

Why? See this...

From Joystiq Click to go:

Sony CFO Nobuyuki Oneda noted recently that the PS3's cost is still 10 percent higher than the system's price, reports Andriasang.com. With the console's price differences in each region, if Oneda is talking about Japan, that would be approximately ¥4,000 ($42). In North America the same $40 loss would also hold true.

As bad as losing money on each console manufactured sounds, it used to be worse. Just a year ago the estimate was that Sony was losing over $100 per system. Losing a couple Jacksons (four Hideyo's in Japan) per console isn't great, but it appears that Sony's costs and sales on the console are slowly finding equilibrium. Unless, of course, there's another $100 price drop in the PS3's near future.

I don't understand all this obsession with the profitability of the console hardware itself that some of you show.

Sony can increase profits while cutting the price by increasing sales and thus the profits coming from extra controllers and software sales, even if the cost of production doesn't decreas of the whole $100

Let's say that they expect each PS3 to sell an extra DS3 and 2-3 games in the short term (averaged over the year) after the console is bought. Let's make that $30+2.5*$20 = $80 of profit.

Thus right now each PS3 sold this year will bring $40. Let's say that's 10M sales, thats of the order of $400M.
Now let's suppose instead a new slim PS3 decreases cost of production by $90, and it's sold at $300 with the famous $100 sale cut. Now each new PS3 loses Sony $50, but with accessories and software it actually brings in $30.

Thus the condition for increased profit is that due to the price cut it can sell more than $400M/$30=13.3M.
If the cost reduction is bigger, then even a lower increas in sale will bring in more profits than the current situation.
Plus, gaining marketshare will bring in extra money in the long term when new accessories and games are bought.

Basically, they know the statistics and the average numbers, thus as soon as the production cost reduction will be hefty enough to match the sale increase they projected, they'll cut the price.