The talking heads on Wall Street are at it again. High profile market analysts such as Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter and Jesse Divnich of the simExchange are predicting a price drop for the PS3 80GB model down from $599 to $499 according to Gamedaily.
Now wait just a moment there, guys. Didn’t Sony just announce, not too long ago, that their PS3 60GB was going to have a price drop from $599 to $499, only to tell us that, "Oh, it’s not really a price drop, we’re discontinuing the model at a closeout price. But hey, you’ll get a brand new PS3 80GB at the new (old) price of $599!"
Michael Pachter says, "We note that Sony recently acknowledged that it will no longer produce its 60GB PS3, and we expect the price of the 80Gb PS3 to be reduced to $499 before the holidays, maintaining a premium SKU at that price point."
Divnich believes that Sony has no choice in the matter. "To remain competitive against the other consoles, the Sony PS3 would have to reduce its 80GB SKU by $100 down to $499. Other options, besides a price drop, could be the bundling of more free software titles, which has always been a popular option during the Holiday season."
If Sony is waiting till the Christmas holiday season to unload their discounted 80GB PS3s in hopes of gaining more market share, they may already be in trouble as they will still be quite an expensive game console compared to the $250 Wii and $350 Xbox Premium HDMI edition.
