I don't think that Sony has decided yet exactly what kind of consumer they're going after.
Initially, their rival was obviously the 360, so they could justify a higher price, along with a larger harddrive, etc. However, look at any mainstream financial report (or any non-gaming media) and you'll see that the 360 is usually ignored, but the Wii consistently comes up as the PS3's competition.
This leaves Sony with an interesting problem: compete with Microsoft on higher-priced, premium hardware systems? Or compete with Nintendo on low-priced family-based gaming? It's really impossible to do both (Microsoft has tried, with limited success on the family side).
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I don't think that Sony has decided yet exactly what kind of consumer they're going after.
Initially, their rival was obviously the 360, so they could justify a higher price, along with a larger harddrive, etc.
However, look at any mainstream financial report (or any non-gaming media) and you'll see that the 360 is usually ignored, but the Wii consistently comes up as the PS3's competition.
This leaves Sony with an interesting problem: compete with Microsoft on higher-priced, premium hardware systems? Or compete with Nintendo on low-priced family-based gaming? It's really impossible to do both (Microsoft has tried, with limited success on the family side).