I think my OP answers that question. You can fool some (enough) of the people all of the time... The mere existence of a "console war" in the minds of many also answers your question.

Let's not get bogged down in the logistical detail too much. Sony sells the PS3 to retailers for the "base price" and Sony takes all the PSN subscription money for itself (i.e. Sony wears all the cost and inconvenience), whether the fee is paid through the PSN or at the time of purchase at the store. Sony incentivises retailers to sell at the full price (least hassle for Sony) by letting retailers keep some of the "PSN subscription fee" on consoles sold at full price.

Free PSN is only something PS3 devotees make a big deal of. It probably sounded like a major selling point for a console, and was probably necessary for such an expensive console. But I wonder how many people made their 360 or PS3 decision based on free PSN vs pay to play XBL. People are mostly price driven in terms of how much they need to pay today.

Mike, yes you have also accused me of being some rabid MorphOS fan out to get you as well.  The problem with that is you've left a trail of how that is a fabrication on your part.  First, you've accused me of being different folks over time.  The first person was someone you fueded with apparantly years ago.  But then you got banned again at Amigaworld.net so accusing me of being that person was not going to work any more.  Because now you had the issue that you got banned by the moderation team and/or owner of the site for the 2nd time.  So then you had to shift the accusation to me being someone with the potential power to do that there instead.  Already that shows you are just trying to make stuff up to sow seeds of doubt.  But you have a problem there even in that the moderator you say that I am very clearly in his sig supports all three Amiga OS flavors.  In fact, he lists *your* favorite at the top of his sig *and* he is on the latest version of it, while for Morph he has not even bothered to upgrade fully (according to his sig).  And thats not even counting his support of the third flavor of Amiga OS, AROS.  He also hardly ever posts at Morphzone.net, the home base of people supporting that OS.

Additionally, the other issue you have in your fable is that you've been banned before at Amigaworld.net, and that was before this person was even a mod there.  And any simple search at the site shows how many warnings you've gotten there, by at least four or five different mods over time.  And some of those people are staunch supporters of your favorite Amiga OS.  So no, its very clear you are full of it.  

This seems to be a repeat of your attempting to create a revisionist history to explain away bans, just like you have tried to do for your permaban at Neogaf.

You know, even though your theory is kinda ridiculous because people still perceived the total price of the PS3 as too high regardless whether you can pay all at once or over a "3 month period," most big electronics already have some sort of deal like that with their credit cards, in fact, you can pay over 6 to 24 months period interest free!! (ie Best Buy). So in conclusion, PS3 is still seen as too expensive and your theory fails

The problem still lies in Sony allowing a three month payment plan to take effect. Who does that fall on? Do retailers still have to pay full price for a console and allow customers to do something like this, or does Sony give the consoles to retailers in credit? Regardless, retailers just wouldn't to deal with the hassle. Without the payment plans, your price structure is basically $499, $599 and $699, which is worse than what Sony cooked up back in 2006. There would still be over a $100 loss per console since all early estimates were that the PS3 cost over $800 to manufacture, and now the price would be perceived to be worse, so they would sell less PS3's than they did in reality.

Do you actually have a sound proof plan as to how this will work for both Sony and retailers, because you've yet to come up with anything concrete.

Do you remember PSN when PS3 launched? a year after PS3 launched? I pay for Xbox live because it's great. To have paid $600 for a PS3 at launch and additional PSN fees for what they provided would have been criminal.