February 25, 2009 3:09 PM PST

Rumor: PS3 price cut imminent?

There's continued talk of a $100 price drop on the 80GB version of the PlayStation 3.

(Credit: Sony)

Another week, another rumor that a PS3 price cut is right around the corner. This time the fuel comes from Janco Partners' Mike Hickey, who, according to the site gamesindustry.biz, said in his latest note to investors that Sony needs to chop $100 off the 80GB PS3's price to "restart unit velocity at retail" and that "recent channel checks indicate increased speculation for a PS3 price cut announcement from Sony in the next couple of days."

To cap things off, Hickey added more brutal commentary:

"If Sony does not cut the price of their console, we expect the continuation of languishing PS3 hardware sales and the potential for publishers to accelerate their reallocation of resources away from the PS3 console."

In the same article, there's also some bizarre speculation that Sony will put out a PS3 sans Blu-ray player. This seems a little off the wall, considering that you wouldn't be able to play most PS3 games on a PS3 that doesn't have a Blu-ray player. Plus, the PS3 is basically a Trojan horse for Blu-ray.

Maybe what this really means is that Sony is working on a PS3 version of the PS2 that could play downloadable PS3 games and be backward-compatible for PS2 titles. (OK, I'm kidding, but see if you can say that sentence fast five times in a row with perfect elocution).

When all is said and done, we do agree with Hickey and other so-called analysts who say Sony has to cut the PS3's price by $100 to jump-start sales (duh, right?).

But we've seen specials recently where the PS3 is already selling for less than $350, so in some sense, a soft price cut has been in effect, though a flat $300 is what people are waiting for. The question is whether we're days--or weeks--away from an official cut.

What do you guys think?

Hunkered down in New York City, Executive Editor David Carnoy covers the gamut of gadgets and writes his Fully Equipped column, which carries the tag line "The electronics you lust for." He's also the author of "Knife Music," a novel. E-mail David. Follow David on Twitter.