Early adopters tend to be more dedicated consumers, wouldn't you say? Not to mention being consumers for the longest period of time. I know you can't expect to take losses from something and hold them for long, a quarter is ideal a year is the target, but Sony is large enough to handle a business practice like that. Even with their failing market strength in other divisions they are making important changes as to not see the same level of financial problems they have seen the past 4 years. Not perfect, but if they balance out they are left with a lot of money to tackle a razor blade theory product.
As for the Yen conversion rates....some positive news came recently on it compared to the Euro despite the US dollar not getting better. Time will essentially be on their side as both European and United States economies should be moving forward in the good portion of the PS4's lifecycle. It might not be favorable at launch, but if there is a strong reason to predict improvement (unless not) then they could take certain risks at launch expected decent profits on hardware shortly down the line. This is a big factor for Sony right now.
As for the price of the system itself I assume $400 msrp with around $50 loss or so. A machine like that would have considerable power if you try to compare to what PS3 did price wise. Cell and Bluray inclusion boosted the cost of the PS3 up to $880 or so right? Probably up to $300 more than it would have cost if they used a different architecture and dvd. (rough numbers) They could have sold it for break even at $600 had it been that way or for the same loss at around $400. Anyway, a $400-$500 console for manufacturing PS4 without expensive new tech could pack a punch.
Considering 1080p 60fps is the gaming goal next gen that's what it means. The Wii U does this but to a limited extent. Not all of their games run at that and they have to stream to their gamepad. The Wii U is better than current consoles no doubt, but it seems like it will suffer degrading output based on the demand it has, especially with the gamepad. I suppose you could consider it the step up from our 720p gaming today, while that has the occasional jump to 1080p, the Wii U will do 1080p with the occasional jump down to 720p. Frame rates aside though. Essentially what I expect out of PS4 and Xbox 3 is 1080p at 60fps without a need to go lower and with better graphic cards. Effectively maxing out the full HD generation while giving a graphics boost that will properly utilize the new game engines we've seen. Given their launches might not come till 2014 at this rate I don't think that it would be difficult to achieve that level of fidelity. As for the graphics card, just enough a bump up from Wii U to have people notice, especially if they don't put out any 720p games. That's what I feel an up to extra $200 on the production cost of the Wii U can achieve. Will mountains move? Will Patcher shut the hell up? No, but it will be pretty on every console.
If not and they are like the Wii U then maybe cloud gaming is the plan for next gen and it will become a graphical beast then, if fiber optics infrastructure pulls through in haste as well as internet prices go down.
Before the PS3 everyone was nice to me :(
