So why not $1,500?

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Sony has to do a fine balancing act between pricing for the early adopters and not subsidizing them too heavily against the perceptions in the ultimate mass target audience and keeping them interested for when the prices do come down to their level.

If Sony had charged what the market will bear, the masses may have felt the price would NEVER get to their price point, and they might start looking elsewhere for their next-gen fix.

I wonder if announced pricing step-downs might have worked? Say, $999 until the end of the year, then $799 for next two months, and then settle to regular $599 pricing. That would actually send a message that Sony was aggressive in getting the price down. And $599 might appear to be a bargain relative to the early adopter price. Yet, they would actually be charging far more than originally planned.

Gary