| Yakuzaice said: Uh.....so according to that chart they were making money for the ~1.5 years before the price cut? Doesn't seem right that costs were at $400 in January '08, yet have only fallen $64 with the slim. |
The author of the article and the chart made some misleading things. First off the article claimed the PS3 basically broke even for a while, even though as of the end of 08 iSuppli still had the PS3 losing ~$50 per console sold. I think the author of the article made a few errors by just trying to remember what he/she thought happened rather than looking it up, so the chart he/she made is inaccurate. Also, the gaps in time are spaced evenly, but represent a 14 month gap and a 23 month gap, respectively. That and there were intermediate drops, not straight from $600 to $400, so all those combined make the graph lines look very misleading.
The new iSuppli numbers are good, though, and as far as I know, they are the lowest the PS3 has lost per console sold so far. After "sold to retailer" price is factored in, it's still about ~$50 lost per console sold, but before it was always $75-100. After another year they should break even and be profitable on hardware unless they cut the price again.
