[Source Kotaku]

A $260 Loss Per PS3 For Sony?

According to some number-crunching by the Guardian, Sony might actually be losing more money per PlayStation 3 sold than its figures show.

A look at Sony's recently-announced financials show a significantly improved condition for the company's PlayStation business year over year. Sony's game division lost $1.2 billion on the year - last year, though, that number was over $2 billion.

So the company's clearly closing an internal gap. Its own figures, however, seem to show $130 lost on each PS3 it ships. The Guardian, however, points to the profitability of the PSP and continuing strength of the PlayStation 2 to paint a different picture. From its article:

"On Sony's own figures, the games division made a loss of $130 for each PlayStation 3 shipped. Let's assume that it's making pots of money on the PSP and the PlayStation 2: the PS2 is now hugely profitable and still sells more games than anything else. These two platforms could easily have made a profit of $1.2bn in the year. In that case, the total PS3 loss would have been $2.4bn shared between 9.24m PS3 consoles, or $260 per PS3 — including any attached Sony games."

Is Sony losing $260 on every PS3 it ships? [The Guardian]

Well... Sony could be losing money on something else... like maybe some Sony game bombed or something.

So that would mean PS3 costs $660 to $760 to produce still? I find that hard to believe honestly.

Most estimates had it at like $850/PS3 at launch right?

I'm thinking it costs $500-$650 to produce but I haven't looked at the numbers... 

So much for a ps3 price cut.

Wiis cost less than Sony loses per PS3 sold.

 Also, they're basing their numbers off of an assumption:

Marketing and R&D costs have to be contributing to the loss too. Also some games (Lair) may have cost more to develop than they ever earned back in sales.
Is that $130 lost/system based on the last quarter or all year too? Cause obviously it was greater than that at the beginning of the fiscal year.

Losses can be from so much more than just the hardware, duh.
Buying exclusives
Exclusive content
Advertising....tons of tv commercials (The Saliva, "Ladies and Gentlemen")
Research & Development
Unreleased software that is costing, but not producing revenues yet.
Ect, ect.....list could go on forever.

You can't just assume the loss is from hardware alone, thats dumb. And I shouldn't even need my MBA to explain this to people--it's commonsense.

If the PSP and PS2 generate a profit, then the losses from the PS3 are even greater than the $1.245 billion. It's kind of amazing thinking that the PS3 could have lost more than $4 billion in two years, but it's quite possible.

It's probably not all hardware related though, marketing, research and development probably take a big chunk.

paying for the imersion tech for vibration probably set them back a bit too