Ugh... ugh... haters getting a bit uncomfortable with sales lol

the production costs for the ps3 slim is slower so i hope sales will compensate for sony's losses.
I have a feeling that this fiscal year sony will have a profit.

I hated Sony for the PS1-PS2 gens: they didn't have the best console, but they won the past two generations because of factors like piracy (you couldn't pirate the GC until the last year), multimedia (more than games), buying exclusives and so on...i admitt now that the PS2 library is one of the greatest ever, but it was not a so great console to exclude xbox and GC from the competition...But now I think the problem is the people, not the console: just like now some people buy Wii just because they ear the name (without trying it), the same thing happened last gen, and there were so many people that thought PS2 was the only console on market.

About your think of Sony in the market as a bonus for Nintendo, you're right saying that in this way Nintendo will do more great thing, but they've done a lot this gen, and who admitted that? I see only people saying: "Ps3 has Killzone, Infamous, Uncharted, X360 has Halo, Forza, Fable, Wii has Wii Music, Wii Sports, Wii Play". I hate that! There are great games like SSBB, SMG (SMG2), MP3, TLoZ: TP and a lot are coming: Sin and Punishment, the new Zelda, the new Metroid, two Marios, Pikmin, the rumors about new past glories (Starfox, Punchout, F Zero); and the tird party support! But only Wii fans see those games, the majority of people think that Wii is childish and as ONLY crappy games (i admit that there are a lot of shovelwer but the same thing happened with ps2, just that its library was bigger).

Is it a joke OP?

I must confess I did not expect them to get away with the $100 discount especially as the PS3 Slim must have additional developments costs to cover.

That said I have not heard of any shortages so one must assume they at least expected to sell a lot.

The software sales versus the hardware and developments costs do not seem to have worked yet but then a lot of that can be attributed to the downturn. I wonder if we were to take the effect of the downturn away whether Sony would ever of been in trouble with this stratgedy.

I'm not understanding your point though. Doesn't count for what?

And you yourself brought up the fixed costs. R&D for redesigning the slim, for mantaining the network, for software updates and toolkits, for the PSPGo. All of them contributed to the $3B losses and none of them scales with the sales of the PS3. Then I quote you:

"But knowing they still lose money if I bought it right now doesn't make me feel as though I would be supporting Sony. It would just be me supporting SCE continuing this loss strategy after it's been shown how bad an idea it is this generation."

As for your first sentence: if you buy a slim, an extra controller, a couple of retail games and a few pieces of DLC you're probably starting to support Sony with your money. It's pretty guaranteed that you will with some extra retail games in a matter of months.

As for your second sentence: the numbers have shown that the strategy can work now because the loss per hardware unit is most probably low enough. There's nothing wrong with the idea per se in this or any "generation", it's about the actual numbers you put in. Would it be all that different if each slim PS3 gave Sony a profit of $1? Because you make it sound like it would, but in practice there's no almost no difference between a console that makes a dollar profit and one that causes a dollar of loss, when there's $60 of profit in the first six month of ownership gained through other channels.

So, what is your point? That you're not buying today a product that would give Sony money to punish them for strategies that costed them a lot of their money in the past? It's a choice you're free to make but it seems to have little to do with actually "supporting" them.

Oh... everyone is answering so seriously... I guess it was not a joke...

So it was a very ridiculous statement.
Let Sony deal with their business. If they sell something, whatever the price is, it's that they think it's better to sell it at that price.

I don't know why I even bother answering... It's so ridiculous...

I think you are speaking out of both sides of your mouth on this.  I think a quarterly loss indicates that the 360 sells at a loss.  Remember the EDD includes Xbox Live which is a huge revenue generator for Microsoft.  PSN and Xbox Live probably have similar expenses, but Sony doesn't have any offsetting revenue.  

Wasn't there a breakdown showing the revenue per game on the Xbox 360 and Ps3 (also the wii)? Anyone have that thread or chart still? I think it boiled down to about $5- $8 for Sony and or Microsoft in revenue per game sold. I just find it hard to believe that $5 - $8 (again i think that is what the figure was) is enough to offset the continual maintenance of Home and adding new servers for every online game as well as the additional loss incurred through the sale of every system. However Sony has been around for years, whether it is through the strength of the playstation brand or it is through it is other branded products remain to be seen.

Very few companies or "arms" of companies can incur $3b losses and live to tell the tale. I do relish competition in the marketplace however as it ultimately benefits me the consumer, with a wider variety and increased quality of games.
Regarding the ps3's sales i believe "one day does not a summer make." Sony has a long uphill climb and they are going to want to milk the Ps3 for years.

However I don't believe Microsoft is really playing the same ball game, I do not think they are going to subscribe to Sony's ten year model, and frankly I don't even think that the Ten year model is viable and Microsoft will want to slash and burn this generation to get a jumpstart on the next one, exactly as they did with the 360. Sony has Moore's law to contend with, which states there chip achitecture is already roughly 4x worst than what is available on the market. And as the HD twins become much more alike and few "standalone" exclusives are available to the systems, Leibniz's Law is going to hurt them as they become relatively interchangeable.

"I think a quarterly loss indicates that the 360 sells at a loss."

That is a loss for the entire division, not sales of the 360 by itself. That's why you can't infer whether the systems is sold at a loss from that.

We know the PS3 is still sold at a loss because people from Sony outright said it is.