Sony Incurring $100 Loss on PS3 -- Analyst

New system may save you some cash. Sony, not so much.

2009-08-20 01:22 / Anoop Gantayat / Comments

The newly announced slimline PS3 offers a new form factor, a higher capacity hard drive, reduced noise output and a lower price point compared to the current system. There has to be a catch, right? For Sony, there might be.

Today's episode of a general interest TV Tokyo news program called Pipitto! Keizai Koukishin covered Sony's Gamescom announcement of the new PS3 system. To help understand Sony's pricing strategy, the program turned to an analyst at Daiwa Institute of Research.

The analyst's contribution came in this slide:

The slide lists the material cost for the PS3 as ¥40,000. The announcer explains that a price drop to ¥29,800 means that Sony's losses will increase with each system they sell. However, if they increase their sales, the material cost will gradually go down, and so too will the losses.

We last heard specifics on PS3's losses in May through a more official source. Back then, Sony CFO Nobuyuki Oneda revealed that Sony was, as of March, still taking a 10% hit on each PS3 sold. Given the PS3's price at the time, 10% would mean a cost to Sony of about ¥44,000.

The TV Tokyo segment also attempted to explain why Sony was reducing the price of the system despite offering new features like the higher capacity hard drive. The answer came in the form of a graph showing PS3 sales trending below Wii and Xbox 360. The speaker pointed out that the system, even with its new pricing, is still pricier than its rivals (the show listed the 360 at ¥19,800).

You can see a streaming version of the report for yourself here.

(as seen at My Game Flash -- go there for the usual ASCII art.)