What alot of people don't realise is a company is only interested in one thing - profit!
Sony's PS3 outing has been nothing short of a disaster, yes it could win the mainstream
praise of its fans etc.. but let's be honest, it took the PS1 appox 6-7 years before it actually
started to make a profit, I think the PS2 was even longer.
Sony are taking a HUGE hit on selling each PS3, their profits from the Playstation brand at one
point accounted for 51% of ALL sony profits (think of how many different products sony
make).
Now to fall from grace at such a height was utter complacency, they took a gamble with blu-ray
and quite frankly lost big time when it comes to revenue.
Yes some might say Nintendo lost the last gen race but financially they didn't. From memory I
read that they sold approx 35 mil Gamecubes. remember nintendo are masters at production and
if anyone here has ever owned one of their systems, they are built to last. More importantly, every
system they sell makes a profit.
So in that sense, if nintendo made enormous profits in the last generation and presuming PS2 made
great strides too (and looking at the numbers, still outselling PS3 in some territories) what does that tell us?
Did people stand by the Playstation brand this time even though they were winning the mainstream
generation last time ? No
This time it came down to price. You drop the blu-ray player and it becomes 200 dollars cheaper at launch.
Still expensive but affordable.
Reuters worked out that each wii sold makes nintendo $6 profit (now that was from launch) that may have gone up,
due to cheaper electronic parts and advancing technologies pushing prices down.
Sony and M$ must be taking an awful hit on their console, does anyone have any real figures? must be $50-75
at least for PS3, I presume the 360 is less.
So even if the PS3 does catch up with the 360 or Wii in peoples hearts, its going to take a decade to break even
financially and even longer for the company to forget it's mistakes.
