Ignore the Wii in this, just use the Xbox 360 numbers. Sony has a much larger 1st party that Microsoft, so to feed and profit from them they have to see a lot more 1st party games relative to the Xbox 360. "Selling" less than 1 1st party game per console and having many of them bundled for free anyway is not good for Sonys overall profitability.

Now I know the big hitters don't come until next year, games like KZ2 and GOW III etc. They have been very expensive games to develop, probably costing more than your standard multi-platform game considering the time its taken to get them to market. So even with full profitability they probably need to average 1 Million sales on every game just to break even on them (Advertising + Development and publishing costs)

The goal here, I guess is to see Sony come into profit on the Playstation 3. Without profit, they cannot drop the price and without dropping the price they can't boost console sales significantly enough to increase software sales in the long term to break even on the Playstation 3. Its like a catch-22 and the crutch of this matter is those first party games have to profit Sony for their lengthy development.

Im not saying that they won't, im just saying that they really do have to sell well. Motorstorm 2 this week wasn't really a good start for their first parties in the holiday season and LBP may not have cost a lot to develop, but im pretty sure they spent a lot to advertise the game.

What comes first the chicken or the egg? In this case, the egg has to hatch (Killzone 2) and that chick has to lay golden eggs of its' own for them to consider dropping the price in Q1 2009. They promised golden eggs to their investors and without being able to show them off, they haven't got a leg to stand on in relation to dropping the price of the PS3.

I disagree bundling first party software helps eat loss. Bundling third party would hurt them.

As for the ratio, MS simply has a more hardcore audience, and halo, which one out of 2 360 owners owns. If Resistance or LBP been as popular, the ratio would be much higher.

I think they are trying to offer as much value to potential customers as they can. Right now they simply can't drop price, bundling is the only way, and better to bundle 1st party than 3rd party.

What the graph does make me happy about is that sony has sold 15million games at 60$ a pop for their first party. That really helps recover costs.

I do agree that they have to come out with a lot more stuff though if they want to survive. Having some multi-millino selling 1st party titles might even permit them to price drop since they would offset ps3 losses.
It's really too bad for Motorstorm, Res2, and LBP, but then again, ps3 owners have a much more diverse taste than 360. You won't see 10m+ games on ps3 until there are like 50m consoles in the wild.

Bundling helps them sell consoles yes, but they have already eaten a lot of losses from their first party studios. Im not saying they won't sell, but I thought it would be good to consider the situation they have to fix next year.

One things for sure, its better to have one Halo 3/or Gears of War 2 sized first party game than to have 4-5 1-1.5 million selling titles. Once you make the money back on development, any money over that is simply a huge bonus if you can keep selling millions after that break even point.

Heres hoping KZ2 matches Gears as a franchise!

In my opinion, they need to hurry up and release another Gran Turismo that was as epic and large as the third installment... it was the defining reason to buy a PS2 for a lot of folks, and would do a lot to help the PS3 sales numbers.

I do think this article is a little bit over dramatic, and the 2009 1st party exclusives will easy sell enough to count for 1M each. If Gran Turismo 5 gets strong sales it could basically make up for any games that dosen't sell 1M. Sony still do make profit on software from all their platforms and the price cut i feel is more dependant on production cost reductions rather than software profits.

You realize that Ratchet & Clank:ToD, Heavenly Sword, Folklore, Lair, Gran Turismo 5P, SOCOM: Confrontation, WKC, and a host of other titles (SingStar? BUZZ?) are 2nd party titles, not 1st, right? I think even Motorstorm may have qualified as 2nd party when it was released... I think Sony bought that studio afterwards.

Sony hasn't released very many 1st party games for the PS3 yet... Uncharted, WipEout HD, Motorstorm: Pacific Rift, ...heck I can't even think of any others. This chart is very misleading in that regard.  Since it doesn't draw any lines between 1st and 2nd parties, you can only "assume" where the chart author is throwing the titles I mentioned above.  

Be careful you're not tripping over some finely woven "spin".  The chart also neglects to mention that, if you extrapolate attach rates/tie ratio given current sales figures (i.e. as you move the beginning of the graph toward the present), the situation is much, much different...  Assuming from this static set of data, that "up goes more up" and "down goes more down" would lead you in the opposite direction from the truth.

 lol big mistake.

What I do agree with squill about is that ps3 has a dire need for 1st party games that are not bundled. They are eating so much profit this way.

Perhaps you'd care to enlighten us with your wisdom...

"Evolution Studios Ltd. is a British video game developer. The company was founded in 1999 by Martin Kenwright(Digital Image Design) and Ian Hetherington (Psygnosis). The company is headquartered in Runcorn Cheshire as well as having a satellite studio, Bigbig Studios, in Warwickshire.

Both Evolution and Bigbig studios were acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment in September, 2007. ^[1]"

Motorstorm was a launch release... 2006.

lol don't get so offended groucho I'm merely alluding to the less than stellar motorstorm 2 sales. lol

First, this graph is based on NPD.  It doesn't include European figures, where both Uncharted and Gran Turismo 5 Prologue enjoyed the bulk of their sales.

Second, this is only because Sony has yet to release a title the caliber of Halo or Mario Kart.  Their big game was MGS4, a third party title.

Killzone 2 and God of War III should help somewhat, but the major release is Gran Turismo 5, which will probably sell more than even Halo, thus increasing the attach rate dramatically.

So long as games sell enough to become profitable, we shouldn't be worried about this. The only thing is that some older titles like Lair might have never broken even, but the vast majority, like Uncharted, Ratchet & Clank, Resistance, and soon Resistance 2 and LittleBigPlanet, have been profitable, and the sales of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue have probably already covered all of GT5's development costs thus far.

The thing that's really hurting them are the games that have been in development for years that have yet to come out, like Killzone 2. During the first two years of the ps3's life, dozens of titles were being developed by Sony, with only a handful coming out each year to make back money spent. Starting soon, many of those titles that have been in development for a long time are finally being released (Killzone 2, InFamous, White Knight Chronicles), thus finally bringing Sony a return on their investment.

Unless you think all of these games will flop, i wouldn't be too worried about it.