The 20GB is $499 in the states today, right? So you're saying the PS3 will drop in price by 30% after only a year on the market? That's pretty extreme.
It's not about percentage, it's about psychological pricing.
You have to sell your product at a price people are eager to buy. Obviously, in the case of the PS3, something went terribly wrong during its production for Sony to sell it, at launch, at such a high price. The blue diodes and the large size of Cell come to mind as an explanation for that.
Anyway, in an attempt to recoup a part of their initial losses, they opted to launch at a high price, knowing, or more exactly thinking, that they'll sell out the first batches at any price. Even this loss minimization approach came at a high price for them and for the brand, most, if not all, the press, financial market and the core demographic opinions about the product were swayed away from it.
For now, I think it's clear that they were not idiotic enough to think that they could run a long time on the marketplace with such prices. Not a single, even the most optimistic one, market researches would have shown good results, for more than six months, for $499 and $599 SKUs on the actual US market. And it seems that someone from the marketing had their way in Japan, since they dropped the price of the 20GB model prior launch. And looking the first report from Japan, it seems that they'd need more than that to emulate the PS2 success there.
To sum up, unless the Playstation brand in the US is really an unstoppable force, Sony would have to correct the price of their entry level model accordingly to what the demand on the market is ready to pay for it.
I think that in the case of PS3 and 360, the psychological price is that of the higher cost SKU. People "feel" the 360 is $400, and that the PS3 is $600. I've mostly seen the lower costs SKUs mentioned on Internet forums.
That is somewhat true for the first buyers, AKA the hardcore and the enthusiasts.
But most of the sales made on the market are done on the cost conscious part of the market.
And the mainstream and the casuals go for what is cheap. You can get interest for higher priced SKUs from these demographics when you bundle games with the hardware, though. But they're pretty much indifferent to features.
On the other hand, people tend to discount the price of accessories/games, even when adding those makes a significant part of the initial purchase. That's why I feel Sony was wrong with the deemphasis of proprietary standards from a business standpoint (from a consumer standpoint, it's another story, of course) : many people won't mind adding a $50 memory card to their $299 purchase, but would definitely think twice about buying a $349 console with 10 times the storage.
That's totally true.
Actually, that choice from SCEI gives more credit to my theory that Ken Kutaragi, during the development period of the PS3, lost touch with the market reality and had way too much decision power in his hands. He really asked the SCEI engineers to come up with a computer... Which is nice from a consumer standpoint, as you noted, but completely stupid from a console business model standpoint.
It's obvious that with the latest management changes made at SCEI and the PR stance from SCEA/SCEE, concerning the "computer" part of the PS3 (They're claiming the PS3, as far as they're concerned, is a game console, primarily), Sony aknoledged that a lot of the decisions made by Kutaragi weren't for the best of the company financials.
I'm talking of an hypothetical $299 SKU. That wouldn't be the one present in demo booths, I'd presume! And WiFi is even less likely to be cut than Bluetooth imo - remember, PSP connectivity...
The 499 version has no Wifi, and you can link your PSP to the machine on USB alright.
BT isn't going anywhere, it's dirt cheap and more importantly its the protocol used for the various game accessories of the machine (Gamepad, headsets, etc...)
