In a recent interview with an industry analyst Mike Hickey of Janco Partners he stated that a PS3 price cut may be coming soon.  But he embarrassingly states that he thinks that the way Sony will be able afford the price cut, is to remove the Blu-Ray Drive.

The concept of a price cut isn’t ridiculous, I agree that a price cut is needed and could help push the Playstation 3 back into competition with Microsoft when it comes to units sold.  There are rumors that it’s possible that the current price could be cut by $100 which would make the 80 GB unit $299.99.  Yet Mike states that he thinks Sony’s strategy to afford this cut would this  "We are also hearing continued speculation that Sony is working on a non-Blu-ray PS3 console, which could enable them to make the aforementioned hardware price reduction."    

Personally I find this extremely unlikely and would be a downright stupid move.  They then would have to release 15 DVD versions of Metal Gear Solid 4 and Little Big Planet.  Their production costs double when it comes to distribution and retailers would have to double stock and clueless mothers would have to make sure that they purchased the appropriate version of the game to run on the new console they just bought their kid.  Plus one of the things that is a driving force behind black box o’ Blu-ray’s sales is the fact that Johnny is getting a game console while mom and dad are getting an High Definition video playback device.

Simply put, a blu-rayless ps3, would be a complete failure, headache, and idiotic move.  But I’m not an analyst, nor am I on a marketing or development team. Read the full article here.  What do you guys think?