When does the PS3 become cool again?

Sony is already making official noises about a PS3 price cut in Japan in order to hit its sales targets.

Once that cut happens -- and I think it's pretty much guaranteed to happen if Sony executives are speculating about it on the record -- then it's only a matter of time before those cuts wash up on our shores.

Assuming Sony can cut $100 off the U.S. prices, where would that leave the PS3? Well, the 20 GB model would then cost the same as a premium Xbox 360, and in fact the two consoles would then have nearly identical specs. But the PS3 would also include Blu-ray.

At that point, I think the 60 gig PS3 becomes kind of pointless, even though the built-in wi-fi is nice.

I'm also willing to bet that that's when the PS3 suddenly starts to look a lot more interesting to mainstream gamers. Almost all the best third-party 360 games are slowly migrating to the PS3, anyway, so Microsoft loses both its pricing advantage and its game library advantage.

And for the price of a premium 360, you get both the PS3 game machine and a really quite good Blu-ray movie player.

Of course, Microsoft could then counter with its own price cuts.

But that would only be good news for gamers.