So last i heard PS3 lost Sony something like $4 billion?

Can anybody confirm? 

But even so, with the low low cost to produce PS3's now and its great legs, will PS3 ever turn a profit for Sony (as a business endevour)?

I think it's too late to make back that kind of money. The PS4 has majorly cut its legs and will continue to do so, and Sony has shown they don't have interest in cutting the price so I believe there isn't any sort of momentum to be had.

Edit: Assuming the figure is $4 billion or anywhere near that, of course.

I'd be very surprised if the money they got from software sales didn't more than make up the hardware deficit.

Software is where the money is after all....

They are getting PS3 efforts in the form of PS4 profits. They invested a lot of money to make PS3 library shine. That wasnt wasted.

Dont you mean PS3?

No, I mean the release and success of the PS4 has cut the legs of the PS3.

Yep... sony lost like 4$ bn on the ps3 & MS lost like 3$ bn on the Xbox360.

When they go out of production... will they have earned sony or ms, any profits at all? who knows.

they won't even come close to getting that back. That's way in the past now, they just need to continue like this and they will get it back with the PS4. Also for some in here you can't single out the PS3 now, because the losses would have been much bigger if you take out PS2 profits after PS3 launch. Hell even PSP was covering for PS3 losses and they were still enormous.

The Ps3 will probably never recover the money that was invested into it. That said, the PS3 laid a strong platform and gave momentum for PS4. Which is probably a good thing for the long term prospects of playstation.

To be fair to Sony, they had a really rough start with the PS3. Really, really rough. It took years for the PS3 to properly gain momentum, and the first year was burned on the failure launch model. Then they had to complete R&D on the Slim model to figure out where costs could be cut and design improvements that could be made leading to what was basically the relaunch with the Slim, which meant essentially doing manufacturing on par with what would be expected for a launch day event once more. Then they weren't content with the sales momentum of the PS3 after several years passed and did all the work to turn out the Super Slim, which was a less momentous occasion but must have still cost a fair bit of cash.

I'm not surprised Microsoft lost money on the 360 either. They may not have had the launch issues the PS3 had, but the system cost them a lot in RRoD repairs, system replacements, as well as legal costs, then finally further R&D to release a model that looked nothing like their RRoD machine (despite the fact that later model phats had already gotten past the old hardware issues). Microsoft had a bumpy road in an entirely different way, but it was a bumpy road none the less. What was probably worse for them was the fact that the original Xbox was basically a flop, so their game console division couldn't look back at previous profits from the past generation and pat themselves on the back and say they'd be okay.

Granted, I'm sure both made up at least some of the cost in software sales, but I doubt either Sony or Microsoft were necessarily impressed with the end financial performance of their consoles. Even if software sales helped, software sales should ultimately not be what covers a console's lacking sales performance on the hardware level.