| DoesWhatNintenDont said: Anyone know how many PS3's ( in hardware sales ) it will take to come out of the red at the current price? Adding an additional $100 for nearly $300 loss per console seems too hefty if you ask me. At this rate, Sony can't see any profit per system until five games are bought. To make things worse, a dev. company can't turn a profit on a game unless it sells 500,000 units*. Thus many developers have been discussing rather limited titles to be launched on PS3. This price drop would have to usher in a whole lot of sales, ( which I think is doubtful ), for game developers to even consider being more loyal and agressive with publishing PS3 games. *http://www.gamespot.com/news/6162509.html?sid=6162509 |
It is actually far worse than that because Sony doesn't make $60 per game that is sold. From licencing fees Sony can make (approximately) $10 per game and will make $30 to $40 for every first party game that is sold after they have paid off the development and marketing costs. Essentially, you can't make up a $300 loss based on game sales alone ...
The likely way that Sony intended to recover these losses is that they anticipated reducing the cost of the console at a far slower rate than the console's manufacturing costs were reduced; which (in general) isn't too unrealistic because (I anticipate) that by moving to a 65nm process, removing the emotion engine, and eliminating a SKU Sony has probably already reduced the cost to manufacture the PS3 by $100 or more.
