The PS3 was sold for less than its production cost

 

The PS3 was sold for less than its production cost

The basic PS3 version, which had a 20GB hard drive, sold at a loss of $US300, with the 60GB version selling for an additional loss of US$240.

While this might seem totally bizarre, it wasn’t that unusual at the time.

The idea was that Sony would make up the loss through games and additional hardware sales.

While the Xbox 360 was also sold at a loss, the loss was only US$130 per console.

Every cloud has a silver lining, they say. Sony's CFO Nobuyuki Oneda has revealed the recently reported financial losses experienced by the company's games division were less than expected because the numbers of PS3 sales were lower than hoped.

Looking on the bright side, Oneda said, "Sales of the PS3 have risen but we booked losses due to our strategic decision to price it below the (production) cost. Actually, because the number of units sold was not as high as we hoped, the loss was better than our original expectation."

Last Thursday Sony posted an operating loss of $237 million for its games division, a figure mainly attributable to the fact that the company has priced its PlayStation 3 console lower than its production cost. It is widely estimated that the Japanese firm currently incurs a $200 loss on every PS3 unit sold.

Oneda went on to admit that "the main battle is still ahead of us" with PS3, but he's confident that software devs will continue to support the console.