mrstickball said:
Microsoft makes money per X360 sold...Even at $200. That's not to mention the massive amount of cash they make per Pro or Elite, which have pretty decent profit margins (since both merely come with bigger HDDs that are cheap to produce). At the moment it's at break-even according to a MS UK rep. He said they make money on some, lose money on some. I'm assuming he means money lost on Arcade, money made on Pro and Elite. He probably also means that it depends on the market, depending on the relative strength of the dollar. On the other hand, the Playstation 3 is nearly impossible to judge. They should be close to breaking even on each PS3 sold, or making a very slight profit - but they are most likely on the razor edge - if Sony wanted to make any money this generation, they'd need to keep the current price until they can get the PS3 to ~$300 before the next price drop. They are definitely losing money on each console sold. Their most recent earnings report indicates this--money lost in the gaming division in spite of strong domestic PSP sales (and PS2 sales worldwide). The Yen has surged over the past few months, any console sold in Europe or America likely costs them big. But they were still selling a decent number of systems. That meant that one could always hope against hope that the lead the X360 had would diminish, and with forward momentum, they could re-capture 3rd parties, and gain back a good following. But with the X360 enjoying comfortable leads (which are very unlikely to change over Christmas), it's impossible to see a good future for their system. No 10 year plan. No more exclusives outside of 1st and 2nd party IPs. No price drops until the system is virtually irrelevant. And if the trend continues, whatever shred of exclusives the Playstation 3 now has (FFvXIII) are most likely toast. The good news? It gets more and more likely I can get Valkyria Chronicles on my X360 :) LOL, rubbing it in. |
