you are absolutely batshit insane.  Do you realize what it means to make a profit lifetime for the PS3?  That means making up 3.6 billion dollars, and that doesn't even account for the PS2 and PSP profits that helped make that number small than it really is.  The PS3 would have to make way more money than the PS2 in did in a much smaller period of time, good luck with that one.

I have a question for anyone who believes Sony is making money on the PS3 and can soon afford another price cut:

Has the cost of Blu-ray hardware, Cell processors, etc. come down so low that Sony can make money or break even on a $400 PS3, meaning all Blu-ray standalone player manufacturers are holding the prices artifically high (it has to cost a lot more to build an HD game console with Blu-ray than it does to build a standalone Blu-ray player)

     or

is Sony losing money selling the PS3 at $400 while standalone Blu-ray player manufacturers are pricing their units at $400+ to make money?

One or the other has to be true.  You can't say the standalone units cost $400+ out of necessity, but claim that Sony can make money or break even on a $400 HD game console with Cell processor, GPU, WiFi, Blu-ray, ethernet, etc.

And Sony's royalties on Blu-ray are likely less than $15 per device, so I doubt that gives Sony a magical edge in component cost.

 yeah i know.  i'm just trying to stop ps3 fanboys from attacking me on something that's not even my main point.  

Yeah. Its pretty clear that they are not even close to breaking even on the PS3 as some around here had surmised recently.

I think it will all depend on how quickly BR drives drop in price. If BR starts to take off and production costs drop, we may see a cut in the November timeframe.

Otherwise, I think they wait till holiday 2009. Around the time FFXIII comes out in the US.

They're in the ring with the champ when it comes to waiting out the competition.  MS has very deep pockets and has shown a willingness to keep slugging it out until they finally own a market.

With both companies it may be more of a question of will than capability... they're both profitable overall as companies.  MS has lost money year after year on their gaming consoles but recently appears to be making money in their gaming division.  Sony is used to making a lot of money in their gaming division but has eaten through years of profit with the PS3.

Both companies are profitable overall, but considering that MS has only development costs and no component cost for their cash cows (Windows and MS Office), they don't just make revenue hand-over-fist, they make profit hand-over-fist.  So I'm thinking if it's a contest of wills, MS has the history and deeper pockets to wait this one out.  And it doesn't hurt that their gaming division has show a profit in the past few months.

If they get more great exclusives, and continue to offer the same great value in hardware (and probably more great bundles like the ones so far this year) then I don't see a problem with keeping the same "price" (and emphasis on that word 'cause it depends on the bundle and other possible hardware features). The key word is value. More , better exclusives, more and better services, same high quality hardware, that would mean greater value. It's an elite product, and as such it's marketed and priced.

Well, I think he's not using it in the "we lost have mercy" sense as much as he means "we no longer will agressively attempt to take first place over the Wii at the cost of our profitibility and instead continue at our on pace and price points, no matter what our competition does."

It's not a "doom and gloom PS3 is dead" analogy, but rather a "we're not sacraficing profitibility so fanboys can claim dominance" analogy. 

I think that's right, anyway. 

Hope not a double post:

I think more to the point, it's focusing on their profits, or at least minimizing their losses by NOT focusing on the relatively unimportant "console war." 

Good read. Cant really disagree. Sony need to concentrate on profit so as not to throw away the profit made from PS2. Otherwse from a business perspective PS2 would have been pointless.

Well good. If they keep losing money for a while longer the PS3 might of ended up a 10 year system because the board members would refuse to greenlight a PS4... or if they did, it would likely receive less development budget.

If they're profitable from here on out I believe the PS4 will be better then if they lose more money to throw a few extra million onto the "sold" total.