Sony cuts PS3 production costs
It is quite well known that every Sony Playstation 3’s production cost is higher than its average US retail price.
The idea behind this strategy is not uncommon, and the manufacturers rely on games sales to recoup their losses on console sales. However, as it stands, Sony is sitting with around $2.5 billion in losses on the PS3 as a whole.
Fortunately for Sony, the console is steadily becoming cheaper to manufacture. In 2006 the first version of the console is estimated to have cost around $900 to manufacture.
More recently this figure dropped to around $690, and has only just come down to around $450. This is still more than the average $400 retail price, however the gap is closing and at this rate Sony can hope to one day start breaking even on hardware sales.
The reason the console has been so expensive to manufacture has been put down to the Cell Processor, expensive XDR memory and graphics processor, not to mention the Blu-ray player.
iSuppli, a market research firm has said that the revised PS3 design has decreased the number of individual parts from 4048 to 2820. More advanced processes have been employed, including the move to a 65 nm manufacturing process on the core processing components.
Loading ...