In his latest industry note, Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia is forecasting that Sony will cut the price of PS3 down to $299 on its standard tier model, a $100 reduction. The move, Bhatia expects, will be made prior to the launch of Madden 10 in mid-August.

Although NPD data will not be released until later this week, fueling talk of a price cut is the fact that industry sales have been said to incur a 17 percent drop-off in May. Clearly a reduction in price would help spur momentum in these lull months. When you add to the fact that Sony is heavily rumored to introduce a slimmed-down version of its PS3 hardware later this summer or early fall at the latest, a price cut does sound plausible.

But of course, these are only predictions based on the evidence at hand. Only time will tell if said expectations actually pan out.

Analysts Expecting Double Digit Sales Decline for May, Price Cuts for Fall [Industry Gamers]

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