I really hope Sony sticks to this plan. The PS3 will be fine at $399 for most of next year. Of course they will not sell like Microsoft and Nintendo, but they will still sell at nearly three times the rate of the Xbox and the Gamecube. Right now the most important thing is for SCE to start making money. Sony has started to rely heavly on its first party development, but if SCE is unprofitable that is hard to do.

Keys to 09 for SCE

Gaming Side

To me the smartest move Sony can make is marketing the crap out of Killzone 2, and InFamous at the start of the year. If they can move 3M+ of each game fairly quick and sustain legs they can gain a lot of profit form the titles, and with both titles looking amazing consoles should move. Japan is looking solid already with Street Fighter 4, Biohazard 5, and the Final Fantasy Advent Children/Final Fantasy XII demo Blu-ray to start off the year. Moving into the summer they need to start hype for the big games coming, and spread them out. I think this year showed bring out titles for three consectutive weeks is a bad idea. I can already see the mess releaseing Ratchet and Clank Future 2 Oct. 21, Uncharted 2 Oct. 28, Heavy Rain Nov. 3, God of War III Nov. 9, and Gran Turismo 5 Nov. 16 would cause. It would probably be smart o bump a few of thouse titles to 2010.

Store Side

At CES Sony needs to update consumers on the state of the Playstation Store. I think announcing a Music store, with music videos would be a good start. Hopefully we would see that no later than March. Adding a subscription plan to the video and music sections would also be a very major addition. Both of these would make consumers more confortable in purchasing the system. Blu-ray, plus video streaming machines are going to become huge next year.

Price Side

Leave the price the same. With all the great software coming in the early part of the year they will be able to sell systems, and they will be making some nice software income. Summer is normaly slow, and a product with such little hype would not gain much from a price drop during these months. With E3 moving to June this year I think Sony should move its Gamers day events back to late August or early September. At this point I think they can go ahead and trun up the heat. The best possible scenario would be a same day announce and on sale, slim PS3 at $299. If this happens at that time it gives them some time for the word to spread, and it makes for perfect momentum going into the holiday season.

@Devise01:

That article is really old, and it's most likely based on breaking even at the 600 euro price point. The price cuts happened later than that article.

Based on Sony records, we'll see some delays.

Yes I realise that. I guess my point is that Sony have been expecting to break even for a long time. Most (smart) people are expecting PS3 price cuts in 2009, there is no way they will go the year without one. So I guess it'll break even in 2010?

Or are they going to break even then cut the price a month later? Is that even counted as breaking even.

@Devise01: Agreed on pretty much all counts. I would expect a PS3 price cut in late 2009. It can happen earlier, provided the dollar and euro recover against the Yen. I would not count on that though.

With a weak dollar/euro (having lost 10-20% vs the Yen in a short timeframe), Sony's finances will get pounded throughout the year, starting this holiday quarter. Definitely not conducive to price cuts anytime soon unless they want to go into the deep red again.

Nothing surprising about the news, it's a consequence of the normal trend of electronic components' price and economies of scale, just some of these economies need more time and units sold to be triggered than competitor consoles, that had much lower initial costs.
I'd guess that when the euro was stronger PS3 was next to breaking even at least in Europe even this year and anyway, also at the current exchange rate, PS3 is overpriced in EU (1€~=$1.27 now, while highest VAT is 20% almost everywhere in EU) and here it will break even before than in the rest of the world.

I didn't read the article, but when they say break even in 2009, do they mean for that financial year (with basically zero hardware R&D and just production costs) or do they mean break even for the PS3 overall (i.e they make a large enogh profit for them to cover the initial development costs).

I believe they mean neither of those. I think they mean selling the hardware at production cost.

What I can guarantee is that they don't mean the last one you mentioned. Not even the PS2 in its prime years generated enough profit to cover PS3's losses so far (let alone doing so in a single year).

This table always comes in handy.

@NJ5

You make a valid point about the dollar/euro vs the yen. Sony is actually raising prices on its products in Europe. The only exception to that being the PS3. This could certainly push back in price cut for the region. I'm still thinking they have to do a cut in the 1st quarter regardless of the hit they take.

http://play.tm/wire/click/2254631/

wow - MS is deeper in the hole than I thought...but thats a different topic for a different thread.