How much does sony make on the PSN?

[nightsurge]

leo-j said:

DM235 said:

leo-j said:
they are making money for sure..

FF VII sold 100k it's first week in the americas alone.. and that isn't the biggest debut on PSN, so I'm sure it's profitable, plus selling PSN cards to retailers really covers up the cost too

I think Sony only got a small percentage of those sales, as it's Square Enix that own FF7.

And PSN cards are a money losing operation.  If a retailer sells you a card for $20, that means Sony would have sold it to the retailer for less than $20 (no retailer would go to the trouble of receiving, unpacking, handling and selling something for free).  The only real benefit to Sony would be that they get your money before you actually buy something, so they get to earn interest on it.  With today's low rates, I do not know if this would cover the retailer's portion (unless you kept a card for a long time before using it).

yes ofcourse they wont make as much money on the PSN cards, but they end up selling like hundreds of them per store, and there are like thousands of stores that stock PSN card in the U.S alone, so they end up making millions on the PSN cards alone. Also they make money off 3rd party software, and they also make money off 1st party ip like FF VII which is published by SONY in the americas on PS1, as was the re release.

I think you are misunderstanding something.  Sony takes a LOSS on PSN cards.  They sell a $20 card to retail at probably $14/15.  So if each store is selling 100 cards, Sony is losing $500-600 per store on cards alone.  They make no money on cards regardless.  The only way they make profit with this venture is if that $20 spent by the user racks up more than $5-6 in profit.

For example:  Lets say you buy 2 $10 arcade games where Sony's profit margin is 30%.  If you use the Sony card you purchased, that means Sony only got $6 profit, which means they only broke even by having to sell that $20 card for a loss to begin with.