Ben-DutkaSony has already dropped the price of the PlayStation 3 several times – with either direct cuts or new, lower-priced models – but if you're hoping for another this year, you may be out of luck.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said yesterday the US might be headed towards a recession, and as of now, the yen is up while the dollar is down. This has caused Sony to suffer about $496 million in operating losses, which means they're forced to pursue significant reductions in production costs. Basically, Sony currently isn't entertaining any thoughts about lowering the retail price of the PlayStation 3 or PSP any time soon.
“As to the situation of the US dollar’s weakness in the medium to long term, we already have a strategy to deal with it,” said Ryoji Chubachi, Sony president. He further elaborated, “We will lower our production costs as possible as we can and we will choose production sites to cope with the industry’s weakness, and in the short term, we will try to accept more orders.” (source-MSN Money)
Now, we realize that a new PS3 SKU (CECHE01) has cleared the FCC, but we really don't have any details on this new model as of yet. However, based on the current situation, it's probably not very likely that it will be any lower than the $399 a standard 40GB PS3 costs now. There is a slim possibility of seeing a hardware price cut for the holidays, but we shouldn't hold our collective breaths.
