You just repeated yourself, and I still find it faulty. The world is not made of people who give value only to BD playing and zero to games, and from people who only value games and give zero value to BD playing. Most commonly, they'll give some value to both, though in different amounts. And $100 is low enough, psychologically, to make them sway toward an integrated solution. Let's try with a couple more realistic personas:

a) guy enters in a shop to buy a BD player. He has waited for the prices to go down, so he's probably quite price-conscious. He looks around among the cheapest ones. The clerk also suggests "the cheapest ones are about $200 thought they go all the way up or, you know, for $300 you can buy a PS3. It's a better player than these and it's, you know, a playstation for games and stuff. And it has a big hard disk and can play the movies from internet or from your PC. Yes, wireless or with the network cable".

b) guy enters in a shop to buy a console. He looks at a 360 arcade for $199. He sees there's also an Elite $299 model and a PS3 at $299. He asks why they cost more. The clerk answers: "because they have got the HDD, you have to buy it separately with the arcade. And the PS3 also reads Blu-ray movies - yes, the high definition ones - and has wireless. How much is a Blu-ray player? They start from about $200, the cheap ones, but can cost much more"

Basically in both cases I'd say that many people will find the extra $100 a good investment, even if it is not what they originally thought of. There will be those that give really a value close to zero to gaming or BD playing, but they will not be the majority.

I would say the only people who would generally value the BR playback when taken as a group are the gamers. Other people generally don't like using a controller to control a media player or they aren't comfortable doing it.

Is a good equation something like this:

HDTV owners owners without a BR player would probably have some interest in the feature.

The other side is this:

The Xbox 360 has netflix, unlike with the PS3 example the Xbox 360 is about the only source of this feature.

^ I take you're talking about persona (b) i.e. someone who is considering to buy a console. Thus he's either familiar himself with using a controller or can buy a pretty Sony remote for $20. I don't think he'll sweat it, as he'll also have to buy cables and other accessories whatever console he chooses.
As for Netflix: zero value outside USA. And while Sony can add video rental and subscription services too (I think they announced some today for several european countries), the 360 is not getting BD. Which incidentally becomes the more attractive the lower the cost of the movies drop, and the more diffuse HDTVs become.
Anecdote: I noticed yesterday that my local Mediaworld store has almost doubled the shelf space for Blu-ray movies (I'd say it's now about 15% of that of DVDs) and is selling a good number of them at 15-19 euros, which places them in the same bracket as newish DVDs in the same store.

Yep persona B. However I consider persona A to be irrelevant when talking about consoles, the idea that a lot of people buy a PS3 solely for Blu Ray at this point has been debunked.

The attraction of BR relies on whether or not the person has or has not bought an HDTV and whether or not they have or have not bought a Blu Ray player already. Its really hard to say at this point what the market dynamic is because its a complicated issue with no easy answers.

Btw: The Xbox 360 has on demand services with Sky in the U.K and someone else in France as well. So you could say their on demand service covers ~55% of the worldwide gaming market at this point with regards to Netflix or similar.

WereKitten beat me to it, but yup, I was going to say (a) remote controllers are available for movie playback on PS3, and (b) Netflix isn't available outside of the US (although Sky for UK 360ers = good times, it must be said).

Yeah, Netflix is worthless outside of the United States, which is where a majority of 360s are sold, so what's your point?

Being in the minority doesn't make something irrelevant.

No one is saying that the US restriction on Netflix is the end of the world - it's just that Europe is also a pretty large market, believe it or not!

I didn't say it wasn't, but you guys are acting like it's irrelevant just because it's in the US, which is ridiculous when it's the largest market for the console.

Only gamers will care about BluRay in the PS3 when making a purchase but non gamers will care about Netflix in a 360?

Now you say that Person A relies on whether or not they bought a HDTV but in the case of the 360 it relies on whether or not the person is willing to pay a Netflix subscription along with a $50 per year fee on top of that for the ability to use their already paid for Netflix subscription on the 360.

Just like the case with the "If that person doesn't already own a BD player", in the other sense it also depends if that person doesn't already own the $100 stand alone Netflix player and/or *gasp* a BD Player with Netflix capabilities. Both of which do not require an additional $50 per year on top of the initial box purchase.

See, it works both ways. You can't just omit the PS3 because someone already owns a BD player when that same BD player can possibly stream Netflix as well.

The slim + price drop will obviously invigorate ps3 sales for the short to mid term at least.

What will microsoft do in response? Besides a small interim price drop on the elite I think the answer really is NATAL and how much hype they can build for it.

All I really know though is even if the ps3 starts outselling the 360 again microsoft have a long time to formulate a response thanks to their huge lead.