PS2's price slashed to $129 in April?

How much does it cost to manufacture 1 PS2 unit any way? Will they actually be making money from selling consoles at that price?

"Man you people are a riot, if 10%+ like you are stating from your "scientific survey" pooled from buds is true... then the FCC would force a recall. That is the truth!

Stop the madness already.

5-10 million defected?!?!?! ... *checks your temperature*"

The FCC can't force a recall on a product that is out of warranty, unless it is deemed to be a hazard. I.E. new power cables on XBOX's because someone's house got burned down. You never hear of a recall on a car that is outside of it's manufacturer warranty period do you? Given that the PS2 only has a 30 day warranty, that would be kind of tough.

This is not fanboyism. I believe that many of those who are claiming there PS2's broke as did there friends are telling the truth. The fact of the matter is, because of this alot of people aren't going to fork over the money for a PS3 this time around, especially not at launch at the price of $500. NO THANK YOU. I should have learned my lesson the first time when I had to flip my PS1 over to get it work, and then the video jacks crapped out in the back, but I didn't, this time I'm not making the mistake and I will have a hard time considering sony's consoles to be reliable products from now on.

I mean seriously, when EB games openly says that they will buy back broken PS2's so they can refurbish them, that's ridiculous. I worked at EB games for about 6 months, and people would come in to trade in messed up PS2's all the time. XBOX's and gamecubes were a rarity.

Does it really matter if 4-10 million PS2s are defective? Even if 10 million were defective, Sony still got the money from the sell, and the gamers still believe it is worth it to repurchase a PS2. The PS2 continues to outsell the competition, and the great games continue to roll in. God Of War 2007!

Probot, if your lifestyle consists of poor air flow and dropping expensive purchases on the floor in high foot traffic areas, I'd strongly suggest video game consoles are not for you. Or something is seriously wrong with your lifestyle.

When I had enough equipment to neccessitate a piece of furniture I went shopping. It wasn't terribly expensive to get a $40 shelf unit from Costco that had grill shelves rather than solid slabs. It just happened to be what they had on hand but it seemed like a good experiemnt to see if afforded more airflow. It must have work because every one of those machines held up perfectly. That included a entire weekend when the PS2 was accidentally left running the demo mode of a game nonstop. Even the added heat of a 160GB hard drive hasn't stopped that machine.

The biggest challenge has been dust. I don't claim to be a great housekeeper, so in a house on a hill overlooking a major freeway, it could get pretty bad. The biggest accomodation I ever made for that was throwing a sheet over the rack of equipment when I was going to be out of town for nearly three weeks and nobody else in residence was a gamer.

And frankly, if you think the majority of class actions are legit cases, don't plan on ever marketing a product nationally or just making a lot of money as a professional. You'll be in for a sad surprise. For every honest lawyer in that field there is a legion of predators.

#19, DOA means 'Dead On Arrival', so usng this term to describe a console that worked for a year makes approxmately this much sense ---> 0.

#51, look what you said: "I bought it from my friend a few years back and it still works fine."

Ok, so your console works fine? But look!

"the blue-bottom PS2 games don't seem to work on the system"

How can you say that the console works fine, only to immediately follow up on yourself and tell us that it doesn't? Pretty lame I think, don't you?

Sony sells their consoles at a loss. They get money from the repair however. They only get profit from game sales. Which is why they want such a huge number of units shipped so they can claim their console is hugely popular when in reality it's mostly replacement units. They want more developers on board and a developer would think that a console with a huge number of units shipped would have the most number of people to buy their games.

I would just like to chime in on the "defective PS2" issue.

For the past 6 months I have worked for a local gaming store, as a repair tech, fixing broken systems for customers.
While it is true that about 2/3 of our total repair were PS2's, at least 75% of those PS2 repair are simply systems that have become dirty over time, particularly if there is smoking around the system. A quick cleaning of the laser-eye is generally enough to get a system working again.

XBoxes, on the other hand, while not having to be repaired as often (which I would attribute solely to the PS2's larger installed base) generally have a bigger problem then simply a dirty laser. Usually the laser has started to fail, or worse, the motherboard/harddrive has begun to go out.

Just my 2 cents.

Almost forgot, in response to an earlier post: Gamecubes.

While we don't see very many Gamecubes come in to be repaired, this is due mostly to Gamecubes having the smallest installed base, and that it costs virtually the same amount (at out stores) to simply buy a new system as opposed to getting yours repaired.

But, contrary to an earlier post, Gamecubes DO fail, and it is usually a serious problem.
Gamecubes, by magic I assume, rarely get as dirty as the other systems, and so don't fail very often due to a dirty laser. However, there is a bigger problem.
Gamecubes have 2 motherboards, a lower board, containing the processor, sound and video controllers, and an upper board, to which the laser assembly is attached, which controls the laser.
Over time, for reasons no one has been able to determine yet, this upper motherboard goes bad. The effect of this is that a Gamecube will play fine for a period of time, perhaps 10 minutes, perhaps an hour or 2. After that time, the system will fail, resulting in a DRE (Disk Read Error). Restarting the system, it will continue to work for a period of time, then fail again, each time working for progressively shorter lengths of time, until the system refuses to read disks at all.

While Gamecubes DO fail less often than the other 2 systems, it is usually a failure attributed to this problem, and therefor very difficult to fix.

Err Nintendo repairs their consoles for free last time I checked. If they repair it and it fails again they replace it for free.

Matt, that's still an increase

$149.99 + $19.99 < $179.99

I would like to add my two cents into this conversation since I happen to work in the industry and see first hand the topic of discussion. First off every one of my companies stores have one thing in common, an extremely high number of PS2 returns and defects. In most cases more that twice the number of any other console. This is fact. Keep in mind the retailer I work for and manage is a fortune 500 company with thousands of store across the US and other countries. Every console has its problems, we get defective GC and XBoxs as well but nothing close to the number of PS2. Now when sony says they have a 40,000,000 US install base, ask yourself these questions.
1. Does that number only include systems sold or shipped, or are there really 40,000,000 PS2 systems being played in the US.
2. Does that number also include every system that the customer has to purchase or exchange for their broken or defective PS2. In other words do Sony's numbers account for the defective systems that people buy or do they get credit for two or three systems to one customer because thier initial system was defective.
3. Can sony still say that they have that install base because they initially sold that many consoles, or do they take into consideration that over the past two years a majority of people have been trading in thier PS2 for an XBox.

I already know the answer to my own questions, but I test you Sony fan boys out there to seriously think about my point and the possibilities of its truth.
I will bet that I will only be labeled an XBox Fan Boy and no Sony Fan Boy will want to truthfully answer or consider my comments with an open mind. For any of you who feel this way, I simply say "keep driking the Sony CoolAid" and one day the world will dissapear.