PS3 price-cut doesn't fit 'long-term' plans

This is a rather doom and gloom thread that has attracted a heck of a lot of xbots. I don't see what the big problem is.

Granted, I've already bought my PS3, but I have not blinked twice at how much it set me back (though I did hold off till the first price drop).

I'd be in the category of those people who weren't able to justify it at $1000, but at $700 it was definitely within my ballpark. I mean, when you buy an Xbox with an nearly-there feature set, it's going to cost you the same amount. Oops, I forgot, HD-DVD got pulled, so you don't need to grab that anymore.

Just go and buy yourselves a blu-ray player instead. Remember Blue Ray guys? It's now the only "next-gen" hi-def format. And only PS3 owners of all the formats have it.

All these comparisons to the Xbox are a moot point, because sony don't have a modular pull-apart system with 10 iterations selling all at once, so they don't have the console designed to meet various price points. I can actually respect the fact that this generation, Sony hasn't really even tried to capture the casual market, but they're still cranking out great games that us hardcore gamers give a damn about.

Xbox's attempts to capture the casuals will fall flat, as the Wii's dominance over that market, a market with a low per-customer spend rate on games in general, is pretty much already secured.

One other thing, I don't know about you guys, but I actually like the fact that my PS3 has never, ever had a problem, and maybe this can be attributed to their design decision to produce one staple model at a time. So they built a reliable machine with a hotswappable hard drive (this is what distinguishes their products), and they paid for it at the start with higher production costs which did hurt their early sales.

Coming out of E3 now though, Sony doesn't seem to be staggering along, do they? Indeed, if you look at first party titles, they seem to be only gaining momentum. And there is no sign of that momentum stilting- and this can be said of all the consoles.

But I guess that's how the "console" war each generation works. There has to be a winner and a loser, and it usually turns on one set of figures, despite the quality of the respective consoles and what they individually have to offer.

By all accounts, Sony hasn't been losing more money from what I remember. In fact, as parts become cheaper to produce, that line between meeting cost and making profit is blurring. So I still have high hopes that Sony will come good.

I certainly don't think there's cause for concern, or all the naysaying going on here. Bit melodramatic, guys?