It’s official gang, the PlayStation 3 is now being sold at a profit.
Traditionally, videogame console creators like the current big three – Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo – have lost money on sales of hardware to keep consumer cost down and to get their machines in as many homes as possible. This loss is then ideally made back mostly through software sales. Sony recently announced that after 3.5 years of PlayStation 3 sales, it has finally gotten the system’s costs down to a point where the hardware is profitable too.
While Nintendo changed the game and made a profit on every Wii sold since its release, the PlayStation 3 is a much different story with billions estimated to have been flushed down the tubes by Sony selling it at a one-time hefty loss. Back in February, the loss on each PlayStation 3 sold was down to $18. Now, there is no loss taken at all.
As translated by Andriasang, a Japanese Reuters report stated that Sony started turning a profit on the PS3 at the end of March. Sony CFO Nobuyuki Oneda indicated that the profit is in the single digits, an he expects that the system could “reach double digit profitability in the near future.”
Unfortunately for Sony, PSP and PS2 hardware and software sales were down last year. Sony expects to sell 15 million more PlayStation 3 systems this year, and at a profit to boot, while it’s being rumored that Sony may also unveil the PSP2, whatever it may be, at E3 2010. Will Sony’s massive PS3 investment pay off, or will something come along that turns gamer attention away from the console before the end of its supposed 10-year life cycle?
Source: Andriasang
