[citation][nom]bak0n[/nom]It's called "the sweet spot". Something many console makers have a hard time finding.[/citation]
I'd broaden that statement, to say that it's something many ELECTRONICS makers have a hard time finding... At least by intention.
I think that it's quite possible that, if they're pursuing market dominance, electronics makers should start by first figuring out the "sweet spots" in price are, and THEN engineering a solution for each one they wish to. We'd likely wind up with consoles, etc. that overall, we'd find are a better deal for what they do. There's not that much wrong with taking this sort of "price-point first" approach; after all, it shapes a lot of major decisions are PC hardware makers, most notably AMD and nVidia when it comes to video cards.
And it's not like trying to find some of these "Sweet spots" for gadgets is particularly hard: it's blatantly obvious, for instance, that $99US happens to be the most well-known; a "pricey" high-tech gadget will invariably sell like wildfire at that price, as HP has seen even with their deprecated TouchPads.