A good chunk of the R&D costs were from Intel's Cell processor and the blu-ray. I thought they'd developed their hardware, hence the talk about the R&D costs. The R&D is priced into the cell processor and the blu-ray drive I'm sure . I wonder if their "market rate" is with the discount sony would inevitably get from buying in such large quantities.

With all that being said, I'd assume that blu-ray drives and the cell processors have gotten quite a bit cheaper now. I don't think it'd be unreasonable to hit that $200 reduction in price between the blu-ray and the cell processor by now.

http://shopper.cnet.com/1770-5_9-0.h...q5628240023473

You can buy blu-ray players for close to 200 dollars now retail. That's $150 less than what it was at launch. I can guarantee that Sony's getting a material discount on even these prices. Although I guess the one in the ps3 could be higher quality? I can't seem to find any prices for the cell processor now though.