Sony will not post a gain for this past quarter

[Infamy79]

theprof00 said:

@montana
Maybe this is me being arrogant, but I'm pretty sure all the higher paid employees are accounted for. Customer service can be outsourced, and is generally very inexpensive as compared to things like sales, manufacturing, and research. Of which, two of those things are for sure included in the overhead cost of ps3 and games.

Manufacturing costs that Sony refers to when they say they will be breaking even soon are simply referring to component costs, not labour costs. They also usually don't refer to additional expenses such as the controller costs, packaging & shipping costs either. Even the 3rd parties that do estimates of cost are simply based on the components used.

That's why breaking even on a console means little when you have staff and infrastructure to pay for as well. Same goes for software development too. A game budget may have been $x million, but if it doesn't turn a profit then who pays the bills for the rest of the company to operate?