In an interview with 1up.com, Sony’s Phil Harrison recently clarified the talk surrounding the PS3’s price and the possibility of a price drop. In a nutshell, when Sony said they were looking for ways to “cost reduce” the PS3, that means they’re looking for ways to manufacture it cheaper, so that THEY lose less money on each PS3 shipped. As for a drop in the PS3 price for consumers, you may be out of luck for a while.

1UP: Recently, Takao Yuhara indicated that price drops are a part of Sony’s plan to expand the market when the timing is right. Is it damaging, this early in the console’s lifecycle and just ahead of the system’s launch in Europe to already be talking about price drops?

PH: Well, do you know what he said was, cost reduction, not price drop, and there’s a big difference between cost reduction and price drop. So, that I believe is where the confusion came from. Obviously, we are investing our money in making PlayStation 3s cheaper to manufacture—that’s part of our business plan.

1UP: You’re not going to pass the savings along?

PH: When we can, when there are savings to pass along to the consumer, we would obviously choose to do that. That’s the business model.

1UP: Wait? You guys are doing this to make money? Really?

PH: That’s videogame hardware 101.