[evino]

http://www.nextgeninsider.com/Home/News/ps3retail.php

[Spiwak]

I wouldn't say that's "confirmed" as it's just some guy from EB. When Sony confirms those dates and that price, that'll be "confirmed." But man, that'd be awesome for them if they can actually keep it under $400, as I think that'd be a big deciding factor for people sitting on the next-gen fence. The one major problem is of course that many people have already bought their 360s.

[Toefur]

This means nothing.

Perhaps most interestingly, the store manager revealed that they already have a SKU for the new console. When asked what price tag will be attached to the SKU, he replied $389.99(CDN). Considering the costs of manufacturing the PS3 are enormous, a price tag under $400 seems rather surprising. According to the Eb Games store manager, “each PS3 sale is being subsidized by the big Blu-ray backers including the big movie studios, so at the end of day Sony can undercut Microsoft and not lose massive of amounts of money per unit.”

EB always has SKUs before they (or anyone) has concrete info on upcoming games or consoles. They put them in the system so that people can start ordering them.

To be in the system they have to have four things: a sku, a price, a name, and (when its a coming soon item) a date. When they don't actually know any of these specifics, they just put in any old thing just as a spacer.

We've had the PS3 in our systems at work since about September/October.

And a lot of stuff that they don't know dates for, as the date they have in the system comes close, they change it again so the marked date doesn't come.