Sony has been loss leading for three generations now; twice it worked liked a charm, and the third time it has been a much more difficult road. So my question is, do they change their strategy with PS4 and try to profit from day one, or will they return again to the tactic they have always used?

it worked before and it will probably work again. give them time.

I can just assure you something ,,,PS4 will be evolutionary not revolutionary ,,,meaning that PS4 improves upon PS3,,,,so it will not be a new architecture,,,rather an improved(up to 4 times power )PS3,,,that way they will be profitable from day 1 and they can focus on games from day one,,,,(it will be cheaper)


if they do this,720 might become another xbox(1st one).

This time they lost too much, I don't think they'll take such risk again

The question is that if the PS3 will be the final loss leader, my answer is: I don't think so, because if they think they have a revolutionary system they will, again, use losses if the new features are too expensive... But next generation i don't think so, they will evolve the PS3 into the PS4 like Nintendo did with the Wii (yes, it is an evolved Gamecube, and no, it's no disrespect to the Wii)... Probably they will add something completely new, but the CPU, GPU, RAM and disc reader will be an upgrade...

they will correct the mistakes their learn from the ps3.
first being price, considering the scalability of the cell cpu and blu ray (at 200gb ) x8 speed right now.

sony will be the biggest competition this and next generation especially for m$.

My prediction, the PS4 will be sold at a very slight loss day 1, designed such that if a person buys

a PS4, a 2nd controller and a game then Sony will make $0 profit/loss.

PS4 won't be anywhere near as expensive as the PS3 was simply because it will use much of the same technology as the PS3. It will obviously use Blu-ray as it's media format as well as the Cell Processor since neither are anywhere near being pushed to their limits. Most of Sony's losses on the PS3 can be directly linked to the development and manufacturing of those two components. Obviously Sony won't need to develop them a second time and the prices for both are constantly decreasing every year. By the time Sony launches the PS4, both the Cell Processor and the Blu-ray drive will both be dirt cheap to manufacture. I wouldn't be surprised if Sony were financially capable of manufacturing PS4s at $400 dollars at launch and make profits similar to those of the PS1 and PS2.

I think you're right... Sony will continue to use the Cell... they will just use more of them... by the time the PS4 comes out it's likely that they will be using the same cell that the PS3 uses only 4-8 of them.  I think that Microsoft may take a deal with Intel to use their newer chipset, but it wouldn't surprise me if they head the AMD/ATI GPU on a CPU with multipul cores.  Their Kodiak comes out in 2010... that's a quad core at 64 bits... by 2012  they could be at a much higher level, but you can fit more cores if you take out those extra instructions that they did on the 360.  I think they could stay with the power PC and hit around 12 core, but I'm not sure...