Actually for what I know, retailers make an extremely small margin on consoles, and yes, Sony sells them at close to $400. Retailers mainly margin on accessories, secondarily from games.

And the Wii made $6 per console in dec 2007, and we know that it made a profit for Nintendo since launch. Meanwhile, we know that from launch the manufacturing cost of a Wii went down 45%. Do your own math.

As to the PS3, it's going to move to 45nm chips this summer, that's supposed to lower the costs by something like 85-150$ (i've read different numbers). Where are you pulling your dates and numbers from?

Personally, I don't think the Wii motion control was the sole reason for it doing so well, although it was a factor definately.
fun games for everyone, simple to use, reliable, relatively cheap at launch and huge desireability are also to be considered as factors imo.
problems for sony PS3 atm: price *yawn*, not enough casual games, seen as intimidating and too hardcore by many (imo).

@One_touch_KO

What can Sony do you ask. The answer is that they are borrowing money to obtain liquidity until such a point as they can regain profitability. Yes it is a short term solution with long term consequences.

How much is Sony selling their console for? Believe it or not its near retail price. The retailer does not profit so much from hardware markup, as software side sales. With no inherent risk. What they do not sell Sony buys back.

Sony is probably not making a profit on hardware the currency exchange rate is probably seeing to that, and the support is probably losing them more. However on the upside licensing may be bringing them very close. As long as the sales do not plummet, and stock locks up liquidity they should be surviving.

Sony being desperate well I suppose they are a little desperate. After all they are losing money, but its not as if their creditors are coming to take their house. They have plenty of time, and a decent credit rating. Do not ask me how, but apparently people are willing to lend them money.

The PS3 is going to be profitable in 2009

and a motion controller is not going to help anything, it's best to ride everything out till they can have a price cut, the less PS3's Sony sells the less money Sony loses so....

No, PS3 has no need for motion, Sony can do just fine without it.

For them to pretend like motion is nothing, and never release the ability on PS3 is just stupid though. Seriously, one of the biggest problems with people is that no one wants to admit when they are wrong. This is not acceptable as a company. Companies have to swallow their pride, and do what consumers want or fail to succeed. It is as simple as that.

Personally, as I have said many times before, I don't like motion, and I don't care if it is on the PS3, Wii, PC, 360, or Jessica Alba. I know that my opinion is not shared by a large majority of the market. I think that giving those that look at it as selling point the option to have it in any of the next gen consoles, is something that needs to be addressed.

Ding ding ding we have a winner ^

and god damn one touch....relax O_o roid rage much?

Playstation already changed it's controls dramaticly once. They can do it again. Points to dramatic new analog sticks they added in the 100 million playstation 1 selling era!

@Ziejedi

this is a very good link though this is price into store.

One-touch-KO

this is a good link that Ziejedi you should check it out. i'm not sure it hurts your argument though further number crunching would be needed.

I think you're failing to understand what made the Wii so popular.

It wasn't the presence of motion controls so much as the absence of them in the other two consoles. Had the PS3 had the motion controls and affordability of the Wii, together with the Sony brandname, at launch, being a successor to the PS2, it would be in first place right now. Particularly if the other two consoles featured no motion sensing. But even if they did, because of Sony's power, the PS3 would be in first.

But, of course, that's not the case, and the Wii launched with a low pricetag and motion sensing. Because people wanted something new, and others wanted a reason to get into gaming, the Wii was a massive hit. Putting motion control into the Wii (or 360 for that matter) would do nothing. The Wii is associated with motion sensing in the minds of the public, they know the Wii had it first, a lot of people already own Wiis, and you can get, in the eye of the casual gamer, the same offering (motion sensing) for a far lower price on the Wii. The 360 may be cheaper, but any attempt to chuck motion sensing in would be seen as desperate and pathetic, and would have little to no effect, because it's not novel anymore, and Nintendo has had time to improve it.

So in short, it's too late to do anything but ride this gen out and hope for second place and, more importantly, profitability.

That sounds a bit too much. Cell it self cost some where around 50 to 90 $ (Usually I have seen estimations ~60$ to 65 nm chip and ~90$ to 90nm chip). 45 nm chip would reduce cost somewhere ~30$ per chip (uneducated guess). Of course Sony can shrink cooling system of PS3 at same time, but that really can't be worth of 55$ to 120$ per console.

What else Sony can cut from PS3?. Remember that 40 Gb version have 50% less parts than original 80 Gb PS3 version, so how much more they can cut off parts from PS3 without losing features like Wifi? GPU is from NVidia and if Sony did do similar deal with NVidia as Microsoft did with original XBox, then all price reductions of GPU will go to Nvidias pocket. Even Sony had better deal, that 85-150$ estimation sounds just too big to be true.