Quote: They're going to have to drop the price, a lot
They will - the high street price of Canon's other DSLR bodies bears little relation to the RRP, even before allowing for cashback offers.
I don't know what Canon are up to, but I thought the strange thing was running the 450D in parallel with the 400D as a slightly more upmarket version - I think it's this confusion that they're trying to address by replacing the 400D with the 1000D, following the usual marketing model of more digits meaning aimed nearer to the base.
Surely the appropriate argument to be having is what features are being "sacrificed" in the move down market, not what the RRP is, as no-one will ever pay the RRP or anything close to it.