Before I point this out, I just want to say I have a PS3 and love it as much as my 360. No fanboys and fangirls please.

I think that some slight to marginal percentage of the sales of PS3 hardware are for scientific and distributed computing, due to the cell processor and the freedom Sony gives its users. So the money being lost on these sales is just that for Sony, money being lost since those users are not purchasing PS3 games or Blu-Ray movies. So even if Sony ends up selling more hardware it might not actually be increasing its market share in any meaningful way. I can't tell you how many times I've seen home made racks of PS3's in computer labs at Universities, and each one of those systems, Sony is losing money. With almost zero chance that those systems will ever generate software revenue.

Microsoft on the other hand can just about guarantee that every 360 sold is going to be incorporated into some individual or family's multimedia life and will generate software and peripheral sales.

And while we might quibble over hardware sales for the sake of sales. That might not actually be good, if too high of a percentage of sales goes towards these scientific computing projects. I know the overall #'s would not compete with consumer purchases at this point, but how much do we know concerning this phenomenom.

I was wondering if anyone knew where hard data could be found or if anyone bothers to collect data of this kind, concerning PS3's soley for non-entertainment purposes. And not numbers for Folding @home since most of those users probably purchase software for their PS3's.

What matters more than this is attach rate. It doesn't matter if everybody that buys a ps3 buys it for games if they only buy one game each.

Similarly, it doesn't matter if 20% of purchasers buy the system for pure computing purposes if the other 80% by 10 games a piece, resulting in a nice 8 game per console attach ratio.

@ makingmusic476

True, True, True. I guess I'm more interested in actual numbers of systems being used in this way than the amount of money being made or lost on a particular system or even the whole platform. I'm for more interested in the trend as a whole and where the users are taking the systems themselves.

What I'm really getting at is what percent of ps3's are untouchable. No amount of marketing or development would ever result in getting a sale of either software or peripheral hardware. The attach rate does not tell me anything about a segment of the market I know exists but can't quantify.

I wouldn't call that wasted though. Money spent by researchers developing programming methods for the architecture etc isn't wasted. Infact one could say its essentially free R+D for Sony and thats the likely reason why they support the community inspite of it costing them money.

As far as numbers? Who knows really, I couldn't actually say.

It's probably a much lower percentage than the idle 360 that aren't being used anymore because a 2nd 360 was purchased to replace the bricked one.

I shouldnt think it will be too much

I think it's VERY VERY few. Even if it's 100000 systems, it only makes 0.5%.

And I think it was good advertisement for the PS3 that did not cost a lot of money. All the stories of big PS3 clusters made it good press.

Add the R&D that Squilliam talked about, I don't think that it was uninteresting for Sony.

Not even 0.1% probably.

The number is very very low.

I have to agree with RVDondaPC, how many 360's sit in a bin or drawer while the second purchase hums away under a TV. Many on this site alone have said they have brought two.