Howard Stringer Says Games Profits Are Sony's "Top Priority"

Speaking at its annual shareholder meeting in Tokyo today, Sony boss Howard Stringer has said that the #1 priority across the entire company is - coupled with boosting their TV business - restoring profitability to the games division. And it's not hard to see why! The PlayStation division alone has lost Sony around $3.4 billion over the past two years while the PS3 was moving from R&D onto the shelf, so you can forgive Sir Howard for wanting to see a little of that money start making its way home.

Stringer Says Restoring Sony TV, Games Profits Is Key [Bloomberg] [Pic]

Holy shit. I knew the PS3 was losing money (Kaz said it could be at late until the end of 2009 for the PS3 to start making money), but to lose 85% as much money as the first Xbox in less than half the time?

Forget price cuts. Just be glad the system, but especially the games are selling as well as they are.

Then again, if the PS3 is still losing money, I actually hope Sony's cut of MGS4 offset the losses of the increased PS3 sales this week.

Don't you dare think I'm bashing Sony or the PS3. I'm not claiming Sony or their systems suck because of this, nor am I claiming this will ruin Sony. I'm just pointing out that the PS3 is putting Sony in a financial bind, same as the Xbox did.

Of course this could be an opportunity for Microsoft to cut their prices, assuming the 360 is profitable enough, but if it's just barely, I don't see a price cut for either system anytime soon.

Microsft should announce an $100 price cut for 360 in America on the 1st day of E3, effective immiediatly. And don't let it leak beforehand.

Kaz never said that they will start making a profit by end of 09, he said that by the end of this year the ps3 will start making a profit.

I highly doubt that Sony could reduce prices by anything more than $50 with all of the upgrades that they are wanting to do. Don't they want to add BC to the 40g version? That won't be free. Won't they probably put a rumble controller in w/ each PS3 sku? That won't be free. Home? Dang sure won't be free.

Sony ain't getting any huge discount this year, unless the 360 makes a big cut first and forces the Sony people to make a cut as well.

@dallas

If they do it by firmware it will be free..

Looked it up, and he said the end of this year or early 2009, but that's still months of lost money for every PS3 sold.

Those R&D expenses can and probably will see benefits outside of the gaming division, so it is not a total loss as long as they maximize other benefits from that investment.

 Then you have to ask yourself, why isn't the firmware BC already in place?  They have the sotware available, how would it cost more to just add it?     

I think that it costs sony more forthe memory, and might even cramp the PS3 up a bit too much.  They might be willing to add it once they can get the 45nm chips in the PS3 to reduce heat from extra memory, and give the thing some space but that's just my theory, anyway.

Well xbox did not put M$ in a bind they were willing to loss billions more for the xbox's sucess.

They won't charge extra for it, but that doesn't mean it hasn't affected the possibility of a price drop.