Is the PS3 a success?

[Alby_da_Wolf]

As a product it's already almost a success, it will be in a few years, considering its whole life and how it resurrected from the initial deep troubles.

Strategically, it helped Blu Ray winning the format war and it resisted MS' attack also in the gaming world, keeping the PS brand alive and forcing Sony to strengthen its 1st party, that will be very useful also next gen. In addition, now that next gen approaches, PS brand is in a far better shape than during the worst troubles, early this gen, and its currently the strongest amongst home consoles, this should help a lot when PS4 launches.

Financially it's not, maybe it will become, but it will take some more years, not earlier than 2014, to recoup all the losses, and only with the help of SW sales, HW alone would take many more years and need very high sales. Currently, though, it's profiting: thanks also to the increased user base and SW sales, since it stopped losing money on HW, during Spring 2010, it became better for Sony to sell it as much and as long as it can.

When PS3 stopped losing money, it already sold around 50 million units, with losses initially in the hundreds $ per unit, decreasing in three years and a half to zero, on top of this losses, initial investments must be added, but profit per unit on HW in the second half of its life, with a low retail price, won't ever be as high as the loss per unit in the first year and will probably always be in the tens $, so HW sales alone would need to sell a lot more than another 100M, very, very unlikely, to recoup losses. Luckily for Sony, SW sales, with lots of 1st party games, to boot, and with the help of peripherals too, will make possible what for HW alone would be almost impossible. But not before 2014, and it's an optimistic estimate.