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Forums - Sony - iSuppli: Sony not loosing too much money with the PS3 these days

dsgrue3 on 11 December 2009
nightsurge said:
dsgrue3 said:
nightsurge said:
Yakuzaice said:

Uh.....so according to that chart they were making money for the ~1.5 years before the price cut?  Doesn't seem right that costs were at $400 in January '08, yet have only fallen $64 with the slim.

The author of the article and the chart made some misleading things.  First off the article claimed the PS3 basically broke even for a while, even though as of the end of 08 iSuppli still had the PS3 losing ~$50 per console sold.  I think the author of the article made a few errors by just trying to remember what he/she thought happened rather than looking it up, so the chart he/she made is inaccurate.  Also, the gaps in time are spaced evenly, but represent a 14 month gap and a 23 month gap, respectively.  That and there were intermediate drops, not straight from $600 to $400, so all those combined make the graph lines look very misleading.

The new iSuppli numbers are good, though, and as far as I know, they are the lowest the PS3 has lost per console sold so far.  After "sold to retailer" price is factored in, it's still about ~$50 lost per console sold, but before it was always $75-100.  After another year they should break even and be profitable on hardware unless they cut the price again.

Sony have said themselves they will likely reach the break-even point in March. Also read previous posts pertaining to the amount of money retailers make from console sales...$10 is a big difference when considering the amount of volume the PS3 ships. 

Also as someone mentioned previously, I'm sure Sony gets most of the parts for much better prices than iSupply can gauge.

And yet the iSuppli figure is right in line with what Sony said.  They said they are losing ~10% per console sold.

If you could link me to where they said they will break even in March, I'd appreciate it.  If they are losing $30 per console sold, I would imagine March could be the break even point, but with nothing to reduce the costs further for a while, I doubt just refining the manufacturing process would lower it that much that quickly.  I could be wrong.  I'm definitely no expert on manufacturing.  I'm just always speculative of every story like this.

I am mistaken. It was an article from 2007 stating that Sony thought they could break even on the cost in March, 2008. More recent quotations simply state they hope they will be able to reach the break-even number sometime next year.



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Slimebeast on 11 December 2009

It's amazing how Sony has been able to reduce costs that much in just 3 years and still make a more attractive console (slim is always better in my opinion).

Losing only $30 at this point is far better than most people would have expected.

MS is so far behind in cost reductions.



Aion on 11 December 2009

Still there losing more money.



 

   PROUD MEMBER OF THE PLAYSTATION 3 : RPG FAN CLUB

 

XxXProphecyXxX on 11 December 2009

LOL!!!! @ the "I do not accept this!!!"



Dark Chaos on 11 December 2009

Does this take into considerations the Millions of dollars spent on R&D costs to create the Slim. This doesnt make sense at all. Sony lost around $500 million last quarter when they were breaking even on the PS3?



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Xoj on 11 December 2009

so overall the make money =).
buy the games people, they deserve it. 20-40 millions games arent cheap



johnsobas on 11 December 2009

according to the article they broke even in january 08 but i don't think so. I believe that was the quarter they barely profited, but during a holiday quarter it is very easy to cover up losses, and PS2 and PSP were selling better then.

The price is on a line going down which is not how it happened obviously. It should have been flat at $400 until the slim was released not slowly dropping. According to this they would have been making something like $50 per PS3 before the slim was released, and that just isn't true. This is far too simplified.



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Gearbox on 11 December 2009

so uhm, sony sells their consoles to retailers for half of retail value. soo. there losing 2ce as much than it shows..



GreyianStorm on 11 December 2009
Gearbox said:
so uhm, sony sells their consoles to retailers for half of retail value. soo. there losing 2ce as much than it shows..

What? Retailers make very, very little off hardware. Like Sony, MS, Nintendo themselves, the money for retailers comes from games, accessories, peripherals etc.



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STEKSTAV on 11 December 2009

Sony said that they're losing money on hardware but that Playstation and all that comes with it is profitable. Why not take their word for it. As for these graphs, they're only estimates at best.