| sethnintendo said: If they were intent to not repeat the last generation why are they going to sell the Vita at a loss? |
There is a lot of ambiguity regarding what has been said on the profitability of the Vita. Personally I think that this interview makes it clear that the Vita is going to be profitable much sooner than after three years, which would mean that while they may take a loss, it's nowhere near a PS3 kind of scenario.
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IGN: Most everyone was surprised by the $249.99 price announcement, including a lot of third-party publishers. How important was it for Sony to get to that point and will the company make a profit on the console sold out of the gate?
Yoshida: At the very start of this project a bunch of us core members went to Japan and spent a day discussing what it is that we wanted to achieve with the new PlayStation portable device. One of the goals was to hit the right price point, which was actually $250. So at the very beginning we agreed that we're going to hit $250. But during that time we were still recovering from the difficultly we had with the high cost of goods with PlayStation 3 where the company lost a lot of money. We asked consumers to spend a lot of money to purchase what, at that time, was bleeding-edge technology. That was great from a technical standpoint but the technology has to mature enough so that a reasonable price can be put on the performance.
For Vita, the price on performance was something we definitely wanted to hit, although we all agreed because we are PlayStation, people expect better graphics and prettier pictures, so we have all those things we wanted to achieve in terms of capabilities, but we capped our ambitions with a cost of goods target that we can profitably sell the hardware for $250.
To answer your question, we set out a goal: Yes, we're going to hit the $250 price, and no, we don't want to sell the hardware with a deficit. That's a goal we set out to do and I'm very happy we are achieving that.
IGN: So you're going to be profitable with each Vita sold?
Yoshida: We haven't completed the hardware development. It's like 98-percent done in terms of hardware, and on the system software side and network code, we have a few more months to work on that. We don't have the final-final answer to that question, but the way we are projecting it seems like we're going to do pretty well. "
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@ Dodece
Buying a new studio is indeed a big bet, and making contracts with second party developers might be a better tactic. But compared to the sales of the Wii and Kinect, Sony desperately needs a killer app that can draw in a wider audience if they want to have a share in that market. Not to mention that Sony finds its first and second party games important to the continued success of its platforms, as it has shown previously through contracts with developers, buying developers and giving great creative freedom to its studios (as freedom to create the games they want, would certainly entice developers to seek Sony as a publisher).
And a bidding war could happen, but Sony have already lined several small exclusives up from third parties in the form of DLC, not to mention Sony's history of timed exclusives. If SCE does get 2 billion dollars dumped in its lap, trying to attract more third party exclusive content doesn't seem out of the question to me. Or maybe they would seek to entice independant developers to create games for them.
I do agree that SOE would be a great option for investing some of this money into. I think the first move should be to integrate SOE more into SCE as a whole, because it is a bit too self contained, considering that it's making games, including for Sony's own hardware. It shouldn't damage SOE's potential for developing PC games though, but I think making SOE more involved with the World Wide Studios will help them produce better games, although they might need some new blood before it happens. They haven't been that successful lately after all.
And you're welcome. 
