NPD Gamasutra article (interesting facts on Sony)

[NJ5]

jneul said:

WilliamWatts said:

One interesting thing I found out because I was bored and listened to Major Nelson was that their number one accessory for the Xbox 360 were points cards for online. I expect that they are thereby increasing the money they earn per console which explains the relative stability of their earnings next to a fall in relative market share next to the Wii and PS3. Thats a lot of Arcade games sold, and they outnumbered Live cards and controllers haha!

Looking at Sony well its going to be a tough 6 months and my prediction is that as soon as the financials are in everyone is going to be calling them epic fools etc. Personally them cutting the price to $299 was absolutely needed and likely had they not done it they would have lost more money from a weak overall market position in the console market between now and the next generation and beyond. Once people stop taking you seriously you've got an uphill battle to get their respect back. So any losses they make are probably justified but they'll still look like monkeys doing it. However they will be less of a monkey in the longer term because of that move.

please get your information right, they reduced the cost of making the PS3 with the PS3 Slim, and passed on some of the savings to the customers, with that being said, they are definately losing less money on every PS3 Slim that is sold now, they are in a stronger position now to start breaking even and making a profit on the PS3.

When the finance comes in you have to remember it is based on the fact theat hey was selling the old PS3 phat for most of the year at a greater loss, only since the PS3 Slim came out they have managed to reduce losses going out, so it will probably be bad news again, unfortunately.. Now next year they should at least break even, I hope

The problem is that the improvements on PS3 profitability have to counter PS2's decline before they can push SCE into profit.

While the PS2 doesn't have much more to decline, one of the issues now is the declining software market in USA (NPD said software revenue was lower in 2009 than 2008, didn't they?)... I don't know if it's affecting Sony much, but if it is that will be a real problem.