| mrstickball said: Sony most likely subsidizes the Online service as a way to get more Playstation gamers online, in hopes that they purchase the more expensive Sony-driven software such as GT5P, Warhawk, Siren, and PS1 titles, whereas Microsofts' offerings are far smaller and cheaper (however has far more content). I'd say that Sony most likely loses a little bit of money on the service (not a ton), and Microsoft makes quite a bit off of it. However, we don't know how much Microsoft actually makes off Gold - Many players use discounted retail membership cards that are lower than $40 USD, which makes me think that Microsoft does not sell the cards for an insane amount to retailers, but makes quite a bit off direct-credit purchases off of XBL itself for memberships. If I were to estimate, I'd say Sony is losing around $50-100m a year, and Microsoft is making around $250m a year from XBL between downloads and gold passes. Expect it to jump when Netflix integrates their service with Microsofts' |
I think your assumptions are way off, Sony should be quite profitable on the PSN by now, there are tons of DLC and original content, and the video store is getting up to 2nd gear now. Another evidence is that we know that Sony loses money on PS3 HW but we also know that the PS3 business is now profitable, games, accessories and psn are offsetting the HW losses and bringing money to Sony, I would guess that PSN is about 50-100M profitable.
I think you're overestimating Netflix streaming service because it's garbage and most movies and TV shows available there suck (The Office is the only one I saw that was woth it). I was one of the people that were excited about that and really enjoyed the possibility until I saw that it's just some select (mostly old) movies that they have there.
PS1 titles are cheaper than most games on XBLA and are not expensive unless you consider 6 bucks expensive....PS1 titles are also missing a lot, Sony could be up there with XBLA and VC in terms of volume if they just released some damn PS1 titles, the quirky cheap games are already there and are coming often, there's also more expensive games as you mentioned, but the volume is lacking, luckily they make up for it in quality. (Wipeout HD for $20, yes!).
