I still say it depends on buying habits. If One to September completely reverses the current trend with PS4 Sony will make a move. It just depends on what they are willing to do to regain their prior powerful position.
I think the well of people swayed by the more powerful hardware is close to running dry. So here on out price parity could be damaging if MS prior successes like Halo revitalize interest in the platform. This is all what ifs at this point. But I could see this move by MS and the subsequent release of key software really helping One in America. Enough so to make outselling the PS4 by impressive margins a monthly thing.
If that happens Sony execs will be asking "What do we do?" The easiest thing would be to regain their biggest competitive advantage in price. If One has a resurgence a $349 PS4 is the minimum. But that's predicated on the idea that One's biggest problem was its price.
This is extremely unlikely.
If you follow the historical "console wars", generally there was a first mover to price cut BELOW their competition, and then the competition reacted accordingly. See: PS2 vs. Xbox, etc.
In this situation, however, Sony already made their move last year when they priced the PS4 at $399, and it took a year for Microsoft to announce a price drop to (with removed functionality) to match.
Sony isn't going to drop below this price just to undercut Microsoft unless their sales are abysmal, which they won't be. Profitability for Sony is important, as it is for Microsoft, and this generation was designed to be profitable for both companies.
People tend to overstate the importance of Halo, or any single title, as a system seller. The audiences that purchased the 360 did so because of a large number of franchises, mostly third party (CoD, BF, AC, Batman, GTA, RDR, etc). Power is going to continue being a factor for this entire generation, and while it may not matter to some, a decent portion of consumers ARE informed about this sort of stuff, either directly or through their friends.
Another big advantage Microsoft had last-gen was their online ecosystem, which was much more robust. This generation, Sony is actually the one that has been proactive in having features at launch that matter to gamers, and their OS/UI is extremely fast and functional. No deficiencies there. It's a very social platform.
Overall though, this generation has really been decided quite quickly. Sony has a lot of mindshare, early adopters have the platform, and in the future their friends will also go with what most of their friends are buying and playing. PS4 is to this gen what the 360 was to last gen in the US. Though, by not launching a year later and reacting more quickly to price drops, Microsoft won't do as badly as Sony did last gen with PS3 in NA.
In the end, what this price drop accomplishes for Microsoft is an ability to get close to PS4 sales in the US, not necessarily surpass them. Instead of a nearly 2:1 advantage like we saw in April, Xbox One may get closer like in March where PS4 had a 20% victory. Recall that many of the deals going on during March were actually better than the kinectless SKU price drop....so I think the month of March gives us a pretty good baseline for what to expect. Some months may be lower or higher than others, but overall I see PS4 continuing to sell better, just not blowing them away in the US like they were.
And the biggest factors of all will be the unknowns. Destiny could be a massive hit similar to CoD and really garner the majority of mindshare with the PS4, which would boost PS4 sales in the fall more than the Xbox One.
There's also not very many big hitter exclusives (from either platform holder) this year. There's some new IP like Sunset Overdrive, DriveClub, and The Order, but nothing that's going to have any drastic effect. The heavy lifting will be done via third parties, and there's still an advantage for PS4 here. Next year will be more interesting, but even so Halo 3 only managed to double console sales for the 360 for about a month before they dropped back down. I think the audience for Halo is very much "baked in" to the current Xbox One userbase, just like it was for Titanfall.
Bottom line: no price drop for the PS4 anytime soon, probably not until 2015 at the earliest, and the same holds true for the Xbox One. Reason being? There's just no need. Sony is not in a position to where they need to cut price, regardless of what the competition is doing. The PS4's 500K lead in the US isn't going to go away anytime soon, and the only way that would be possible is if the Xbox One consistently outsells it month after month. There may be more of an opportunity to do this during the holiday season, but I don't see that happening with the exclusive lineup for either system this year. Destiny is going to sell systems. Sunset Overdrive won't.
