"Sony needs to do something big to get back in the game"?
I don't know where Joystiq has been, but Sony has been stealing the show.
That's Justin McElroy for you. I really don't like the site redesign. When they had the fanboy sites as sister sites, and not just portals, individual writers wrote for individual systems, so you had people who spent a lot of time focused on one system writing about it. Andrew Yoon was the PSfanboy lead and he wouldn't purposely throw out troll bait on his PS3 stories. If mentioning total sales, he could honestly say that 20+ million in two years was a very good achievement.
But now that anyone who runs across the story is writing about the system I am seeing a lot more that focus purely on sales between systems since last summer, when the 360 cut prices.
And on the gaming front, I'll be honest and say that until E3 we do not know Microsoft's release schedule, so making any definitive judgments on titles is slightly premature. But it will be hard for Microsoft to beat the lineup PS3 has this year. Heck, even with all their talk at E3 last year I think Gears and Left 4 Dead were their only big exclusives. Their huge announcement, Final Fantasy XIII, hasn't even gotten close yet. Halo Wars was their big game coming this year, that I know of, so I don't know what they can pull out this year.
They've already halved the functionality of the system. I don't see why a price drop is too much of a hassle to make.
That being said:
SHUT UP PETER MOORE!
Yeah, Peter Moore is far from an objective source. I highly doubt he will say anything to make his career at Microsoft appear to not be some crowning achievement. Then his move to EA Sports makes me question if he has any professional ethics.
But, as for why Sony is resistant to a price cut; based on numbers they put out last year they don't expect to break even at current prices until next month at the earliest. They said the beginning if fiscal Q1 09, which is April for Sony. Assuming economic situations haven't altered that I am guessing the first price cut we will see would not be until late summer/early fall, like the 360 did last year. And then I doubt it would be more than $50. And that is assuming production costs continue dropping.
Sony is in an intricate game right now. They have a successful system, but it is probably a bit ahead of its time and the costs shows. They have to be careful to avoid the Dreamcast mistake of becoming a non-competitor by killing themselves financially. I don't think the PS3 is near that stage, but with Sony as a whole losing money this past year the division may be under pressure to reduce losses as much as possible.
Basically, if current profits are the main concern I don't see a price cut unless publishers actually put some muscle behind their words, which I don't see happening. While they want more, they won't lose access to 20+ million systems. If marketshare is the main concern then I expect a price cut.
I think the thing all analysts and publishers are missing is that with the economy a lot of people are focusing on current profit to make sure they don't go under before they can start to recover long-term.