I seriously doubt that. Sony just had a look at the situation and came up with what they think is the best plan.

The key factors here IMO is that the PS3 is now far more affordable to the masses and the old excuse of people buying a 360 instead because of this has far less leverage.

This also means dropping the price of the 360 will not have the effect as it did before. People avoided the PS3 because they just couldn't afford it.

I don't know how it will ultimately play out but history shows the gamecube price cuts didn't do it many favours once all the others were "reasonably" priced.

Bringing the Gamecube up in this situation is increadibly stupid.

A. The gamecube didn't even sell as much as the Ps3 already has.
B. The gamecube was never an unreasonable price.
C. the gamecube wasn't coming off a successful console.

There is no history to look back on yet.

Sadly, the answer is "not as much as I should be."

1) I doubt they planned to suffer and lose billions.

2) Microsoft has never underestimated SONY. This gen they've been doing everything in their power to crush the Playstation Brand.

HAHHAHAHAH, this is funny, great question, they´ve made an internal competition between Sony DEPTS to see witch one looses more money.

"all of a sudden"
actually sony couldn't have telgraphed their moves any clearer. MS- as well as the rest of the world- knew sony's plan

Sorry, did I miss something. When did Sony come out of no where and then end up on top?

There's no excuse for Sony to be where they are right now. They screwed up big time, they thought that peopel would buy PS3 no matter what so they could stay at the $600 price point and still sell like the previous consoles.
I know people are gonna bring up blu-ray, but wouldn't it have been smarter for them to use that money to pay off warner or something? They could have bought out the war with blu-ray rather than sink the playstation to do it. Would have cost them a lot less money to do that anyway.

lol @ thread. They didn't plan it...end of story

I'm going to use one of my favorite quotes of all time for this one (Changed to fit in a forum):

"What you've just (wrote) is on of the the most insanely idiotic things I have ever (read). . .everyone in this (thread) is now dumber for having (read) it." -Billy Madison's Principal