In my head, it’s more fun to think that Sony and Microsoft are having a stand off and seeing which one moves first. Like some weird game of marketing chicken or a staring contest. But, there’s likely a reality that the price of both systems has already been set. And actually, it probably has except that it’s been set on memos and spreadsheets. Points at which the consoles can sell and make profit or, more likely, how much they’ll take at a loss for how ever many systems until they start actually making money on the things. Obviously they stand to lose less money the higher the price of the console, but then there’s another spreadsheet somewhere from an analyst who likely tells them that once you cross a certain price point of the system, the public’s prospect of buying it starts to lower. And then comes the balancing act.

And then comes the stand off. You do not (at least so far as we’ve seen in years past) want to be the company whose console costs more than the other guys.

In my head, like I said, it’s far more dramatic, but I’m guessing it’s probably something so very anticlimactic and, even worse, boring.