Anyone expecting this thing to come in for less then 400 is smoking some kind of magical expensive crack rock.
I mean- let's consider the facts here -
High end new CPU - at least 100$ for those first few million
High end mass produced GPU - at least another 100$ for the first few million
4GB of DDR5 ram- probably an additional 100$
traditional HDD (size is irrelevant) - around 70$ per drive
"guts"(copper, wafers, wires, fans, case,etc) - 15-20$
6X bluray drive - at least 25$
wifi/ethernet/bluetooth card- 10-15$
all ports other ports(usb/sdcard/hdmi)-5-10$
power supply- 30-40$
And that's just the console roughly, you still have -
dual shock 4 - 30-40$ a piece
HDMI cable- 5$
playstation eye - 30$
Then finally, packaging and shipping - 10-15$ per unit
Total cost ? - around 600$ , this is all some pretty conservative guess work on my part too. I just don't think sony is prepared to bleed 200$ off each unit sold by pricing it at only 400$. They can't really charge 600$ for it either because we all know how that went last time (even if you could argue in 2006, that price tag made it cheaper then most stand alone bluray players at the time). I expect 449.99 - 559.99 , avoids that 600 dollar mark by a wee bit and the cheaper model is an appropriate amount above the cost of a PS3 ... because see, that's another thing no one considering- are they seriously going to price a brand new console only 100$ more then what a ps3 costs ? I highly doubt it.
All these same figures probably hold true for the next xbox as well, it's not as though I'm picking favorites- I suspect because of the slightly worse GPU and much cheaper ram that a durango might cost as much as 100$ less but microsoft is in the cocky position of being the market leader going forward so while they could price it at 399.99 I think they too will go with 449.99 or even 499.99 , especially if the rumors of only 1 SKU are true.
