CNN Money-The PS3 is a Sinking Ship

[shams]

Sony in all truth, has one BIG f***ing problem - one that just can't be solved easily.

They are competing against the 360 - and MS. MS is reaping insane amounts of money from the *rest* of the company, and can throw as much at the 360 as they like. In other words, they can cut the price whenever - and however they really feel like it.

Sony can't. As a company, Sony is effectively struggling at the moment - and as a result they are walking a "fine line" with the PS3.

The more units they sell - the more they lose. Drop the price - and sell even more units, at even a bigger "per-unit" loss.

They really have two options:
1/ INCREASE the price of the PS3 (yeah, that will go down well...)

2/ Suck it in, and focus their efforts on reducing the price of the PS3.

...

Basically, they can't compete with MS - not like this.

They *really* need to launch that "networked-only" PS3 (no BluRay, no drive, ...) and price it such that they *make a profit* on each unit - yet make it affordable enough that it reinvigorates overall sales.

They can't just "pull out" - doing that now, would be the end of the Playstation brand forever (increasing price to "cost" would be a better option).

Unfortunately, sales of the PS2 are also down a lot (and will collapse next year IMO) - and sales of the PSP will also start to tail off (most of the recent boost has come from the release of the PSP 2000 & PSP 3000.. .they can't keep doing this forever!).

Unless they are SURE of lots of software sales, they simply have to turn a greater profit from each PS3 sold. Bundles are a good place to start...