Microhard as made some big losses.

so microsoft has lost a ton of money?

@Bitmap Frogs:
Who said crisis won't keep on hurting them? But the long and short of my argument is that I believe a cost difference greater than $200 is quite unlikely NOW. I'm not absolutely sure, obviousy, but I find it unlikely. And I perfectly know that in the past, when the cost of both were higher and so were the terms of the subtraction, a cost difference greater than $200 was very likely, OTOH, even not taking into account that in the past BD was still very expensive, making that difference even larger. I didn't use Heaven knows what wacky reasonment to come to my conclusions, I simply thought about what I can buy at retail price and have it sent to my address for $200, and MS and Sony don't pay retail prices for components and shipping. But if you want a more pertinent analogy for that price and the items and market we're talking about, think that Wii can be sold at less than $240 giving anyway a profit to both Nintendo and retailers. Well, what else I can say? These and those in previous msgs are my reasons and arguments to believe a cost difference greater than $200 unlikely, if I'll find better ones (the ideal would be to know bulk prices), I'll post it, otherwise I'm done.

About your answer to liquidninja, well, I agree, Nintendo found the right way to play the game, and looking at those charts, it did also during generations when it wasn't winning as number of consoles sold.

Well done liquidninja. The figures have spoken.

Nintendo I salute you.

You don't understand it. It's about Sony earning less per ps3 sold in the states. 

Anyways, you are still trying to guesstimate things you don't know jack about. I wonder why you insist trying to defend the undefensible =/

Every company earns less from each console sold in USA. Each company pays less components, so there's a small compensation. And it's absolutely true that XB360 will suffer less in USA when $ is weak than foreign consoles. But the fact remains that if both things are true, that Arcade profits and PS3 loses, then their cost difference(*) must be greater than $200, this doesn't depend from strong or weak $, it comes simply from their retail price difference. Weak $ means those $200 are worth less, but you know that at least in IT you still buy quite a lot with them, also because components cost is in $ too (for example, you can have an 80GB 2.5" SATA HDD for as low as $32 and a BD reader for as low as $70, RETAIL price).

(*) Including retailers' profit, obviously.

Sigh. MS reports in dollars, Sony reports in yens. Big difference. Third quarter 2008 Sony swallowed 150 million dollars in losses due to the strength of the yen. But whatever... you are still trying to figure out things just talking about newegg prices. Do you even know the yields on the respective silicon? The yields of the overall unit? Manufacturing costs? Logistics costs on products with vastly different components? Oh wait, you don't - you just assume they are irrelevant which is the easy way out.

I am baffled that you so adamantly insist you can estimate the costs on consumer goods just by newegging a few components while ignoring everything else.

@Bitmap Frogs:
I'm not trying to precisely estimate consoles' costs, but to find, guess, if you prefer this word, a reasonable upper limit to their costs difference. You don't find it reasonable, well, I find it strange you don't, as single components retail price usually include higher retailer margin and higher not production costs than the same components in bulk versions fitted together in mass produced items. The arguments you suggest about yields, logistics (that anyway I took into account), etc, are valid, good and necessary if we try to precisely estimate costs from scratch, mine was a different reasonment and I was trying only to find a rough upper limit to their costs difference, it's very different.
And I'm not trying to demonstrate that PS3 was sold at a profit before the last few months, PS3 was only an instrument for this comparison, my target was XB 360 Arcade cost, PS3 profiting wouldn't even be good for my point, on the contrary, PS3 losing would be an argument in favour of my reasonment.

Sigh =/

Let's start with the basics... can you provide an exact list of all components inside the 360 and the ps3?

@Bitmap Frogs:
Heh, I don't remember whether I wrote it in this thread or in another, but I looked for iSuppli last PS3 BOM estimate, IIRC it used October 2008 data, I found a link to a partial summary that detailed some costs, but not those of BD and HDD, and the link to the detailed BOM was broken (http://www.isuppli.com/L2_Teardowns-Personal-HomeEntertainment.aspx?PID=1047 ). Last time I read an iSuppli BOM, though, HDD price was incredibly high, totally outdated.
Up until now googling for XB Arcade BOM, the most pertinent article I found was about Sony claiming XB Arcade isn't worth its price, so, apart the obvious bias, almost the exact opposite of what I say

Edit: I found a XB 360 iSuppli cost analysis, but it was a 2005 one, just a little bit outdated...