Put on your economics hat and prepare for some interesting information on how the global economic collapse and the exchange rate of the US dollar and Japanese yen influences the ongoing price of the Sony PlayStation 3 and how the cost of the console did decrease, but you just didn't notice.  Kombo's Casey Ayers takes us to school with the hard facts and plenty of charts and graphs.

[B]ased on what a customer's dollars are actually worth to Sony, they are receiving 14.8% less in real value today than they would have at launch, and at its lowest point just prior to Christmas, they were receiving an astounding 25.9% less than they would have at launch. This is why it's so important to understand how the currency markets have tied Sony's hands when it comes to product pricing outside of Japan. That 25% off figure, remember, is based on a static price of $400, and doesn't even account for the fact that Sony had to charge around $600 at launch to simply break even. So Sony is, in fact, receiving far less value in return for each PS3sold than they did when the system was first released. Indeed, if that 25% had been kept in Dollar terms, it would have accounted for lowering the price of the PS3 to $300 just prior to Christmas. That's the problem: as far as Sony's bottom line is concerned, they did cut prices for the holiday season.

So how about that?  A stealth price drop.  At least the value of what you get for your money in the PS3 box is improving.  PlayStation 2 backward compatibility and the extra media slots have been sacrificed in the current model of PS3 console, but now the system comes a larger capacity hard drive, a game or two, and a DualShock 3 controller.  Compare that to the launch options of just the bare console (which, admittedly, had more hardware in it for a higher price) and a SixAxis controller included.  We're definitely getting the better deal these days even if the retail price is still financially out of reach for plenty of people.  What's the old saying?  The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single stealth price drop.