360 Costs Half As Much As PS3 By 2006?

EGSonikku writes "According to Merrill Lynch, after doing a breakdown of hardware and manufacturing costs., the XBox 360 may end up as little as half the cost as Sony's PlayStation 3 by 2006. Citing Sony's financial woe's and Microsoft's deep pockets, they predict '...Microsoft's Xbox 360 should emerge as the early winner in the next round of the game console wars.'"

Console Wars: The Story so Far

[DingerX]

Sony: Wow -- neat hardware, big PS2 user base. Too bad crappy dev tools and byzantine Cell architecture by themselves generate several months of delays for developers. PS3 is gonna be on the front line of the war for the living room, so it's gonna be real pretty. Wait. You didn't think you actually owned any of your own content, did you? Hell, if you read the EULA carefully, you won't actually be owning the PS3 either!

M$: Nicer dev tools, and a relatively vanilla design (insofar as 3 PPCs can be boring, it is). Too bad you have to pay a subscription fee to M$ to use it online. The 360 can't compete with Windows Media Center, so it won't be _that_ pretty -- or it'll cost extra to use it that way. Engineered shortage? What are they going to do when they don't have the sellout they made their retailers guarantee?
Revolution: Cool controller. Y'all got a console that works with?

The question isn't "Who's going to win this?" But rather, "Who's gonna buy any of these?"