When Microsoft made the long-rumored Xbox 360 price cuts official, attention immediately turned to Sony to see how they would react to the new developments. Not surprisingly, the company is expressing confidence in their product, claiming that their console is obviously the superior choice and that any sales boost to the 360 will be merely temporary. Julie Han of Sony corporate communications had the following to say about the new Microsoft developments:

"We’ll obviously see the natural lift [in sales] with the price cut -- but how sustainable is that in the long term?

"We’re really confident that consumers are making choices driven by value, and we know PS3 offers that value across the board, with the built-in Blu-ray player the broadest and deepest software lineup in the industry, with LittleBigPlanet, Resistance 2, Motorstorm [Pacific Rift]... we’re quite confident our holiday sales will be good.

"We try to stick to our strategy... we feel the PS3 offers the value at that price point. More than anything, you’ll see with the 80GB announcement at E3 as well as with the recent 160GB, consumers are telling you they want more storage for photos, music... new games are also getting quite a bit of pickup through Playstation Network. There’s also our new video download service that consumers are going to want to do. It’s showing that we’re moving in the right direction."

Sony is putting up the "we’re still the better value" front, but is that going to resonate with consumers in the market for a new console with only $200 to spend? Are people going to continue saving up for a PS3, or will they be content with the equally impressive Xbox 360 at a much lower price? History tells us that $200 is the "magic number" for console sales, and with Microsoft being the first to that point we’ll have to see if that axiom holds true yet again. One thing’s for sure, holiday sales numbers should be very interesting this year.