I would lose hope for the sanity of Sony...

I honestly can't see the next PlayStation being more than $399 at launch... the reason PS3 was so expensive in the first place was because Blu-Ray added another $200 to the price tag at launch, and unless Sony goes absolutely bat shit insane, I seriously doubt they'll be pushing for a new storage medium next gen.

But then again, this IS Sony we're talking about, so who the hell knows!

PS4 $400 launch. :D

That is WAY too much to pay for ANY console.

No. I don't initially buy consoles immediately. 300-400 dollars is good for me. If its a 600, better be a good reason why, unlike the PS3 at launch, which arguably had a couple of useless features and games to go along with it.

What I want to know is how was Sony able to market the PS1 and PS2 at 300 at launch despite the PS2 being superior? Shouldn't that mean that it will be more expensive to manufacture?

I think they will either move to solid state drives or flash, but.... aren't those things very similar?

THe ps4 will probably start at 400$.
The big thing on the ps3 was the cell and the br drive

both have come down a lot in price

Only console I will jump ship on price alone would be microsoft's console. I would get sony one year later mostly because nothing too great is out within the one year.

You're kinda comparing apples to oranges with that statement... remember, when the PS1/ SEGA Saturn originally launched in 1995, CD-ROM technology was still pretty expensive, especially for game consoles during that time which required faster drive speeds.  The two previous CD-based game systems that were released, the Phillips CD-I and Panasonic 3DO, each costed a whopping $700 at launch, so at $299, and with much more powerful hardware under the hood, the PS1 was actually priced very well... in fact, its $299 launch price is what allowed Sony to jump ahead of SEGA (who had only launched the Saturn just 4 months earlier at $399) and take the lead in the 32-bit generation.

Now when the PS2 launched in 2000, CD-Rom was well established and relatively inexpensive, and Sony probably could have launched the PS2 at $199 if it strictly used CDs again.   But DVD was becoming the new video standard, so Sony utilized it as the new storage medium for its games and equipped the PS2 with DVD-playback capabilities, and when you consider the fact that stand-alone players were going for anywhere from $200-$300 and up at the time, that was a steal for having it included with the PS2.

That concludes our videogame history lesson for today... class dismissed!

Since Sony never fails to remodel their system, I will wait for PS4 slim.

600$ was not a ridiculous price. Sony gave you a 950$ machine, which cost them 950$ EACH to make, for 600$ at first. Then people had the fucking gall to say they were putting a horrible price point on it. It made me sick how spoiled people are.