Does anyone think Sony will pull the plug on the PS3 or PSP?

[Parokki]

The PSP is doing ok, heck it's the most succesful non-Nintendo portable of all time, but there is definitely a chance of Sony pulling the plug on the PS3. Not a big chance by any means, but it's far from impossible.

The main reasons I see Sony killing the PS3 early are that it will never make a profit and how Sony is not a gaming company.

I believe the PS3 will ultimately be unprofitable because the whole business model behind the Playstation consoles has always been risky and unhealthy. Sony releases first, sells at a loss, gains third party support, never looses momentum, and finally makes the money back after achieving a dominant market position.

We can argue (and we do ^^) on the ultimate profitability of the PS3, but ending up as a financial failure is definitely a possibilty here. Of course here we have the huge variables of how much the sales will improve during the holiday season, how much the big hits in 08 will help it, and how permanent these sales boosts will be. Let's not get stuck on this, as both making a brilliant recovery and dwindling to near nothing are possible at this point.

Many people bring up how Nintendo kept going through some pretty rought times, and how it took several generations for Sega to drop. The key difference here is that games is all Nintendo and Sega did at the time, but Sony is a general electronics corporation. If their gaming division makes losses for an extended period of time, there will be people high up in the company that want to see it axed. That's how companies work.

The uncertain thing here is that we don't know how much losses the suits are willing to take. It's 100% sure that there is a limit after which they decide to kill the console, but we have no way of knowing how much it is. It depends on a number of unknown factors like the relations between different factions in the corporation wanting to move it in different directions, and how well the rest of Sony is doing when the losses really start to pile up. They'll definitely try dropping the price again, and try a variety of things before giving up if it comes to that.

In the still rather unlikely case that the PS3 is dropped early, the next big question is if they'll try again with another console, or drop from gaming altogether. This is again speculation on things we cannot possibly know, and depends on a number of things like the financial situation of Sony at the time. I'm not touching it with a ten foot stick.