Sony slashing jobs, leaving unprofitable businesses

[Ail]

Gamerace said:

TheBigFatJ said:

Gamerace said:
I'm just going to come out and say it. Flame me if you must. The PS3 should be abandoned. It was lossing them money even before the currency became an issue.

Canceling the PS3 would screw every company developing product for it.  It would be billions of dollars lost, and it would suggest that Sony would abandon their hardware if they make too many mistakes.  That would deter people from developing on Sony platforms in the future.

Abandoning the PS3 would cost more than a few billion dollars in lost profits over the next couple of decades.  You are taking a far too short-sighted strategy.  Sony does make money on hardware for all consoles prior to the PS3.  They just don't make it in the first year -- after that, it is all gravy.

The PS3 has been a huge loss for them and a huge cost.  It has cost them nearly 10 years of profits from the PS2 and it is still losing money.  However, it is still worth while keeping the playstation brand a Sony hardware product so that Sony can collect revenue in the future from it.

Next generation both Sony and Microsoft will be looking to make money.  The strong suspicion is that they'll release products not quite as high end as the 360/PS3 were when they were released, because putting out hardware that expensive is too risky.  Sony will probably outsource much of their R&D to companies who are better at those things, and they will probably buy commodity hardware, especially the CPUs, for the next system. 

There's no way they'd do another cell fiasco.  All of that cost for so little benefit.

 

 By the end of Christmas and certainly by the time PS3 stocks were depleted after a cancellation there would be 20m PS3's sold.   That's the same amount the GC and Xbox achieved all of last generation.   You're suggesting no one could make a profit making games (all ported from/to 360 anyway) for a userbase of 20m??  Who's being short sighted?   Does stopping production somehow remove those sold units from people's homes? No.   Whomever has a PS3 could expect a continued stream of great AAA games right up until the end of this generation.   There's no reason why any developer, including Sony would ever forsake a userbase of 20m.

However... If Sony continues to sell the hardware, that division will continue to bleed money.  PS1 & 2 only made profit on the hardware because they became the dominate consoles.   By now it's clear PS3 will be last in this generation.  It will probably never, ever, become a profit generator in and of itself (hardware).   But the existing base can be for future game sales.   

So if they stop the PS3 hardware but continue selling games, they'll make profit.  If they port those same games, Killzone 2, God of War, etc. to 360, they'll make 3 times the profit.   So why not?   Fanboys be damned.   People depend on Sony for their livelihood.   I'd rather those people had a job than Sony goes bankrupt maintaining the PS3 for the fanboys.

That's a very shortsighted view.

How many new games were developed for the Xbox once Microsoft stopped selling the hardware ?

Not many.........

Sony doesn't make most of its software profit out of the games it actually develops but from collecting royalties on all those games that get published on the PS3 and on which Sony actually hadn't to spend a dime on developing..

 

PS3 isn't going to bankrupt Sony and in the big scheme of all things it's not the reason Sony is having all those problems.

Sony missed the transition to non CRT Television and is only catching up now thanks to its Bravia brand which actually uses technology Sony is getting out of a partnership with Samsung ( because Sony was really far behind its competitor on LCD technology).