I read somewhere that the PS3 is being manufactured at quite a significant loss - apparently the loss is comparable to that if the Xbox360 was being sold at $50 per set (think about it!).
Having said that, the console itself may be worth more than the RRP (I'm only vaguely familiar with the components, but from what I've read they sound pretty steep, financially, to manufacture). But if the console was priced any higher Sony would drive away even more people prospects of people buying a PS3.
Sony seem to have worked themselves into a bit of a catch 22 - Sony are losing alot of money by selling the PS3 at the existing price even when taking into account the offset of the manufacturing costs, but the predicted sales targets were not met, which meant a significant drop in revenue, so to recoup that the machine would probably have to be more expensive, but that would drive even more people away from wanting one, but if they drop the price, even more units would need to be sold to at least fill the sales quota.
What market predictions don't take into account is levels of interest, they go purely on statistics, so if Nintendo's sales statistics were on a gradual decline for the last few years, all the wall street weasels would assume they'd continue to decline because the statistical data has shown a trend in that direction; an approach that totally disregards the level of interest.
It's a similar case with the PS3, although Sony's sales statistics were healthy for the PS1 and PS2, it was assumed they'd be even better for the PS3, irrelevant of the fact most of the attention had been diverted from Sony onto Nintendo's new project - the Wii.
What is the point of this rant? That statistics can be misleading, and don't trust stockbrokers, the NASDAQ, Dow Jones, or Wall Street for that matter
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