Rumor (Again): PS3 Price Cut Imminent?

From CNET Rumor Control area, seems there is more hubbub about Sony cutting the Price of the 80gig PS3 by as much as 100 bucks.  Now we have heard this what 3 times now in the past 8 months.  But Sony always comes back and says they are doing fine with the prices the way they are.  And we all know if they cut their price they will no longer be making any profit so if they cut it, they either found another Manufacture of their parts or they have another price schema in the works. Im guessing having to pay for PSN is not far away.

Via CNET Below

Another week, another rumor that a PS3 price cut is right around the corner. This time the fuel comes from Janco Partners’ Mike Hickey, who, according to the site gamesindustry.biz, said in his latest note to investors that Sony needs to chop $100 off the 80GB PS3′s price to “restart unit velocity at retail” and that “recent channel checks indicate increased speculation for a PS3 price cut announcement from Sony in the next couple of days.”

To cap things off, Hickey added more brutal commentary:

“If Sony does not cut the price of their console, we expect the continuation of languishing PS3 hardware sales and the potential for publishers to accelerate their reallocation of resources away from the PS3 console.”

In the same article, there’s also some bizarre speculation that Sony will put out a PS3 sans Blu-ray player. This seems a little off the wall, considering that you wouldn’t be able to play most PS3 games on a PS3 that doesn’t have a Blu-ray player. Plus, the PS3 is basically a Trojan horse for Blu-ray.

Maybe what this really means is that Sony is working on a PS3 version of the PS2 that could play downloadable PS3 games and be backward-compatible for PS2 titles. (OK, I’m kidding, but see if you can say that sentence fast five times in a row with perfect elocution).

When all is said and done, we do agree with Hickey and other so-called analysts who say Sony has to cut the PS3′s price by $100 to jump-start sales (duh, right?).

But we’ve seen specials recently where the PS3 is already selling for less than $350, so in some sense, a soft price cut has been in effect, though a flat $300 is what people are waiting for. The question is whether we’re days–or weeks–away from an official cut.

What do you guys think?

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