Why can't Moto just take a loss and sell at $500? Didn't Microsoft lose money from xboxes?
That or fight an even more entrenched Apple against the iPad 3 next year......
Moto probably can't afford to sell them at a loss. MS had the benefit of many other divisions that were making money so it could afford to lose money on each xbox for the sake of market share. Moto has smaller profit margins and they don't make the money back from game licensing like MS did on the xbox.
If Google was selling the tablets then I could see them taking a loss on each on just to get Android out there so they could make money on Android. Since Moto doesn't control the software they can't monetize it very well.
Samsung seems to be taking the smart approach by creating their own "Media Hub" software that is supposed to link across all Samsung devices that they can monetize. This might allow them to drop hardware prices in hopes of making $ on the software/media side.