Sony Finally Turning a Profit On PS3s 117
When the PS3 launched in 2006, estimates pegged the price of producing the consoles to be as much as $250 more than the price at which they were sold. Production costs have dropped since then, but there have been several price cuts as well. Now, almost four years later, Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida says they're finally turning a profit on the hardware.
"This year is the first time that we are able to cover the cost of the PlayStation 3,' Yoshida said. 'We aren't making huge money from hardware, but we aren't bleeding like we used to.' In May, Sony began shipping new PlayStation 3 consoles with smaller and more cost-effective graphics chips. Now, Yoshida said, Sony is looking at replenishing retail stock that has been running on empty since January rather than cutting the price. 'When we bring the cost of hardware down, we are looking at opportunities to adjust prices if we believe that will increase demand,' he explained. 'At the moment, we are trying to catch up our production.'"
IOW, SNAFU (Score:3, Insightful)
The old hardware's too pricy to keep making, there's not enough of the new cheap stuff so they're bleeding in new and interesting ways - not having enough product to sell is making distributors angry and their profits small. They're hoping that passing on some of the savings to some of the distributors will make them less angry. That will make their per-unit profit even smaller but they hope to compensate with volume, maybe, someday, when they are able to make enough of the damn things.
Re:Nintendo says... (Score:5, Insightful)
Handy tip for those who don't know: Add #t=XXmYYs to any Youtube link to jump directly to that timestamp.
The above AC link would become http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vouJTvrpHGQ#t=3m30s [youtube.com] - and you can thus easier see how non-funny it was.
Has the console arms race ended for now? (Score:4, Insightful)
3DO, Dreamcast, Saturn, PS1, Atari Jaguar, N64, Philips CD-i, in addition to existing ones like Genesis/SegaCD/32x and SNES which were in the prime of their lives in the early 90s.
Now the 360 has been out for five years and the PS3 has been out for four. Neither company seems interested in making new hardware anymore, which is understandable since they lost so much money working out the bugs. But it seems that nobody wants to one-up the other anymore.
Rather than pursue hardware that is clearly superior to their competitor (as many attempted in the 90s), they just blow money purchasing exclusives.
Re:Why cut prices? (Score:3, Insightful)
Odd.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why cut prices? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why cut prices? (Score:2, Insightful)
I mean if a game was fun in 1986 it is still fun today. I might not be able to tell my kid why I like The Legend of Zelda or Mario All Stars, but it doesn't change the nostalgia. That being said I am quite two-faced on the issue when it comes to new content and ask why would anyone own a wii when they could own a 360/PS3.
In short People want BC so they can have a single machine that can play there old games. I have always assumed Sony would add it back when they stopped making PS2s, but now that they are trying to sale PS2 games on BluRay disk for the PS3 I doubt it will ever happen and I don't know if the next generation will play previous generation games. I know if they switch architectures off the cell its most likely never going to happen.