Right.... a few things I have to say here but couldn't last night as I was having trouble posting (hence blank post above)

-------

Someone already linked to the table showing the game division profits/loss for Sony/MS and Nintendo since 1998.

FY* Sony** Nintendo Microsoft
1998 974,000,000 629,000,000
1999 1,130,000,000 645,000,000
2000 730,000,000 421,000,000
2001 -409,000,000 726,000,000
2002 623,000,000 800,000,000 -750,000,000
2003 939,000,000 560,000,000 -1,191,000,000
2004 650,000,000 316,000,000 -1,215,000,000
2005 404,000,000 777,000,000 -485,000,000
2006 75,000,000 894,000,000 -1,262,000,000
2007 -1,969,000,000 1,489,000,000 -1,892,000,000
2008 -1,265,000,000 2,480,000,000 426,000,000
2009 51,000,000 1,026,000,000
Totals 1,953,000,000 10,762,000,000 -6,369,000,000

The last quarter is missing, which has Sony losing a further $400 million.

----

As you can see, since the PS3 release (the row marked 2007) Sony's game division has lost a staggering amount of money.

-1,969 million - 1,265 million + 51 million (then minus ~$400 million for July-Sept... I don't know the exact conversion but it is very near $400mil)


That comes to -$3,583.
That's a loss of over 3.5 billion dollars.

However that obviously is not the sum loss of the PS3, because over those 2.5 years the PS2 and PSP have been making profits, especially the PS2 in that first year. We can see in FY 2003 how profitable the PS2 can be (almost $1billion in profit, although PS1 will be a small part of that as it was still selling slowly) Since then I think there has been a price cut, but then manufacturing will have come down too. Software has been slowing down recently, but for the FY2007 where they lost $2billion the PS2 was still selling huge amounts of software (after all the PS3 wasn't out till half way through that year, and even then the PS3 didn't give the PS2 much of a hit for it's SW numbers)

The PSP will have been less profitable during the 2.5 years, mostly due to low software sales, but it was still in the black.

So what you have to do to work out how muchthe PS3 has lost, is take away all the profits that the PS2 and PSP made in that timeframe.... there is no way to know the exact figures for that, but I would guess the two of them made over $2 billion when they have 2.5 years to do it, and as a minimum they will have made $1.5 billion.

Thus the PS3has certainly lost in excess of $5 billion (minimum for that 2.5 year period)
and more than likely it will be nearing $6 billion.

----

Then there are some other unknown factors to add in, for instance in the FY 2006 Sony's game division only made $75 million for the whole year, now it is possible that the PSP at that time didn't make a profit for the year, given that the HW was probably still sold at a small loss, and the low SW sales might have only brought it back to even. but the PS2 will have made masses of money, so arguably the PS3 waslosing them money even back then, perhaps a further $500 million to add to the kitty.

Furthermore, we don't yet know what the last 3 months have done for Sony, but given the horrid way the economy has changed for Japanese electronics, I highly doubt Sony made a profit even for the Christmas period.... but we can stil be sure even now that the PS2 + PSP will have at least made a small profit as Sony ave said so themselves. So any loss that the gaming division reports for that period can be added to the total loss the PS3 made.

To be honest I would be suprised if, when looking at the PS3 alone, Sony had managed less than a $7 billion loss.

--------

And about the argument of whether the PS3 has, or will lose all the money the game division ever made, I think it's possible it already has, the table above doesn't have any figures for the 2 years before when the PS1 was selling, and oddly, the year the PS1 launched Sony as a whole company posted a loss, which I am not certain, but could hae been partially caused by the R&D on the PS1 project, so for all we know when you add previous years, the game division (which wasn't set up till 1998, which is why there are no figures in that table for it) may actually have lost all the money it gained.

this is really hard to tell. According to the numbers published by Sony, the division lost 4 billion since the PS3 was released (2006). BUT you have to think about the profit the PS2 and the PSP generated, if you just want to see the PS3 itself.

So 4 billion + profit of PSP and PS2 combined for the last 3 years (2006 + 2007 + 2008). My guess is about 5.5 - 6 billions.

Well and if you want to include the research costs for the PS3 was released (pre 2006), the overall stats increase to 7 billion. So quite a bit.

DirtyP2002 said: this is really hard to tell. According to the numbers published by Sony, the division lost 4 billion since the PS3 was released (2006). BUT you have to think about the profit the PS2 and the PSP generated, if you just want to see the PS3 itself. So 4 billion + profit of PSP and PS2 combined for the last 3 years (2006 + 2007 + 2008). My guess is about 5.5 - 6 billions. Well and if you want to include the research costs for the PS3 was released (pre 2006), the overall stats increase to 7 billion. So quite a bit.

In other words, a shortened verion of what I said.

 

@TWRoO: Well, that could be the definitive post on Sony's PS3 losses. Bookmark it :)

With declining PS2/PSP sales, it will get easier and easier to figure out PS3's losses/profits in future quarters.

RPG said: MS got lucky with releasing the 360 so early, a year later and you would see HD-DVD in every 360. Then again costs would be higher, more space for games etc so everything would have been different. I think Sony thought of the bigger picture which was blu-ray. Do they not get some money for every blu-ray film and player sold? Film >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Gaming in terms of money and Sony wanted to dip there hands in both pots. One has worked and blu-ray is getting adopted nicely, when HS becomes more popular so will blu-ray but the PS3 did suffer. The PS3 is suffering because of the price, some time or another that will be fixed and Sony know that. Also Playstation brand is big and this is what Sony are still hoping helps them, I cant help but think at £200 PS3 will do very well.

 

The sad thing for Sony is, M$ also gets a chunk of this pie because they use a Microsoft codec for blu-ray.  

TWRoO said: DirtyP2002 said: this is really hard to tell. According to the numbers published by Sony, the division lost 4 billion since the PS3 was released (2006). BUT you have to think about the profit the PS2 and the PSP generated, if you just want to see the PS3 itself. So 4 billion + profit of PSP and PS2 combined for the last 3 years (2006 + 2007 + 2008). My guess is about 5.5 - 6 billions. Well and if you want to include the research costs for the PS3 was released (pre 2006), the overall stats increase to 7 billion. So quite a bit. In other words, a shortened verion of what I said.

 

 sorry mate, answered before I read the whol thread. But at least we have got the same numbers, thats a good thing.

its hard to determine the actual losses for the ps3 itself. you have R&D costs covered by the ps2 and ps3 figures are included in division(with the psp and ps2 which both make money).
so you probably wont be able to figure out what they lost just on the ps3.

 

id estimate its probably even over the cost of the original xbox

Aj_habfan said: Oh, looks like it was 3 billion, not 4 billion. But the number is rising.

 

 

False i heard that the sales from PSP and PS2 in adition to software sales actually made sony break even this year in its gaming department.

MrBubbles said: its hard to determine the actual losses for the ps3 itself. you have R&D costs covered by the ps2 and ps3 figures are included in division(with the psp and ps2 which both make money). so you probably wont be able to figure out what they lost just on the ps3.   id estimate its probably even over the cost of the original xbox

You shouldn't need to estimate that, it's very likely

The PS3 as a minimum has lost over $5 billion, and that's a highly optimistic minimum too.

The division that the Xbox is in lost just over $3.5 billion, in the time the Xbox was selling, it's possible whatever else in the division was really profitable though, so perhaps it has lost as much as $5 billion too, but then some of the losses in the year before the X360 could arguably have been part of X360 R&D, so that might bring it down.

It's true there is no way to tell, but I don't think it likely the Xbox lost as much as the PS3 has so far (and PS3 is going to lose more)

 

jacezo said: Aj_habfan said: Oh, looks like it was 3 billion, not 4 billion. But the number is rising.     False i heard that the sales from PSP and PS2 in adition to software sales actually made sony break even this year in its gaming department.

Read TWRoO's reply above.

They more or less broke even two quarters ago, with a $51 million profit. In the next quarter, they wiped out this profit and then lost some more with a reported 39.5 billion yen loss (around $400 million depending on exchange rates).

Sources:

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/viewer/08q2/slide/image/11_image.jpg

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/viewer/08q1/slide/image/12_image.jpg