Wall Street Journal on Sony.... Ouch!!!

[NJ5]

Kyros said:

The point people miss so much is that Sony is a shareholders business, they are not fanboys.

Neither is Microsoft. Yet they provide a 360 for 160Euro and they loose money on each sale for sure.

The thing is each console sold makes money. 10$ for each game sold, more for first-party games. Add to that BluRay discs, second controllers, ps eye, ... and you come out at much more than 50$ per console. That's how the console business works. Now this wouldn't be so bad if people simply waited, but they buy a 360 instead and this results in money lost for each game that was bought for the 360 and not for the PS3.

I would suppose that dropping the price now would be better for them overall but it would of course hurt them in this quarter. Most likely something they don't want to stomach right now after being pummeled by the financial crisis in their other company parts. Stupid nontheless.

On the other hand, Microsoft's entertainment division is profitable and likely still will be during this quarter. Although the Arcade is selling a lot, they also sell a lot of Premium and Elite which don't cost much more to produce than the Arcade. Also, Microsoft seems to be selling as much software as PS2+PS3+PSP combined, when 360 games are more expensive than PS2/PSP games. Finally, Microsoft doesn't have any declining platforms, while Sony has one or two.

My point? There's no useful comparison with Microsoft here. Microsoft and Sony couldn't be more apart than they are regarding financials, especially if you look at the companies as a whole.