I paid 600 for it a few months after release.

I guess I'd still pay 600 for it. I've had fun with it and backwards compatibility is super important to me as I never owned a ps2.

$999.95 with no games packed in or anything. Because thats what i paid.

ok I am not exaggerating but at that time I could've paid up to $799. but that's not what I think its worth. for me $499 is about right $399 is even better.

at $299 I might think of buying one as a gift for my friend's birthday.

No people are mostly being rational here. What is irrational is to expect the consumer to care what the actual production cost is. A product is judged based on what it actually does. If it costs a company more to make a device than the consumer is willing to pay then the company has made a bad choice. The consumer is always right, and almost always rational.

Personally it would have to be around $200 currently. I just can't find enough games I would want to play to justify any higher than that. Even still $200 would be a little rough since I have a 360 for the multi-plats that I like.

For only wanting to play 1 game on the PS3 (MGS4) I would say 200 or less. I don't really care at all for blue-ray :P too bad I got a PC

I would gladly pay full price for a PS3. I'd only buy it for Ratchet and Clank too, but I love those games so much, it'd be worth it.

Or... wait... damn... There are so many other things I could do with that 600 bucks. I could buy an astrodea watch, or a new bike, or...

I'll redact that statement then. I would not pay full price for a PS3, because as much as I love Ratchet and Clank, there are just better things for me to spend that money on. I'll probably not go near it until it hits the $150 mark.

A button off the jumper my gran knitted.

Yes, but not everyone cares about all the frills.  Some people just want to play video games on a console, not watch movies, download movies, do this, do that, and so on, so "everything that's packed into" it just doesn't matter to some people.

If I wanted a Blu-ray player, I'd buy a Blu-ray player.

If I wanted to watch a DVD, I'd put it in my DVD player.

If I wanted to surf the web, I'd use my laptop.

I don't need a video games console to do these things.  I just need it to play the games I want.

If I do get around to getting one, I'm thinking maybe around $200 or $250-$275 if it can play PS2 games.

$299 or lower. You got to slim it and have it read all my ps2 games too.