During a recent investor conference call, Sony corporate CEO Nobuyuki Oneda revealed that the PlayStation 3 console is now roughly 70% cheaper to make than it was at launch. Although he wouldn’t give an exact figure, estimates put manufacturing costs at around $240 – down from around $800.

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Seems to me that's pretty stupid of Sony to acknowledge that. Basically they're saying, "we're really having a good time sticking it to the people dumb enough to pay $400 for our unit."

That is what companies do you know... make PROFIT

Tell that to M$oft and the xbox360, they breaks from the rollout yet people are stupid enough to keep buying more than 2 systems.

So they shouldn't make a profit on something they manufacture?

they should keep the price the same IMO. These rumors of a price drop have been going on 4 years, making people hold back, and back on there PS3 purchase.

I don't begrudge anyone making a profit by any stretch. It's the whole, "our manufacturing costs have decreased by 70%, but we're not going to bother cutting our loyal customers any slack on the price."

So, now that they're making profit on systems, will they lower the license fees so that our games can be cheaper? Hmm, I doubt it. I thought the console idea was that the game system is sold at a loss and the game titles were where the company profits.

Wouldn't their loyal customers already own a PS3? They'd do more for their customers to offer a decent game, hdmi cable or blu-ray remote with each system.

Its still a great console , but a decent price reduction might help sales , there lagging behind there competitors , or throw in a second pad a headset etc...

If you have more consoles on the street, you sell more games and companies see more value in spending any extra licence fees to make games as they see a better return. There has to be a point where Sony stop getting hard-on for having the claim of selling the most expensive console on the market and get back to business.

Lets see they were losing $400 per console...now there making $160. I think they have awhile to recover there loss. Suck it up. The PS3 is an awesome media server for a HDTV and they throw in a blu-ray to boot. Not a bad deal IMO for what it can do.

Agreed. I never complained about the price much after comparing the 360 to the PS3. If you get a 360, you still need to buy several accessories to bring it up to par with all the features of the PS3, making the price comparable to the PS3. After owning both systems, the PS3 is the clear winner in my book. (I shot my 360 after the 3rd RROD and sent it back to Redmond in the prepaid "Coffin". http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic128992.html)

Slimmed Ps3? Oh shhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiii

I wanna see this.

Suck it up? What a joke, Microsoft had to take the brunt of it, and so did Nintendo. The only difference here is that its your precious Sony at risk.

what r u talking about ?

I must not be on the same page as you. What does Microsoft and Nintendo have to do with a 70% drop in manufacturing cost for Sony?

They both dropped their consoles prices slightly with the drop in production cost, the guy said its fine for Sony to keep charging this because of initial losses. The Xbox 360 was losing money per console made for the first two years, so why did Sony expect anything different?

Simple. The PS3 is better quality. That might get me labeled as a "fanboy", and that's ok. The simple truth is that there are many more RROD's (and E74 errors) than YLOD's. To be fair, the 360 is the better selling console, yet they have also had many more returns.

I have had 2 PS3's (the first one was stolen within a month of buying it) and 3 360's (all of which broke). Sony FTW. Piss on Microsoft.

It's funny how this is the typical response to stories like this... Completely ignore the part where the units were $800+ when they were first being built, and were being sold at a loss for YEARS, rather than charging what they really cost, let alone having any profit margin. Now Sony can finally recoup some of the hardware costs through real hardware profit, not just licensing fees, and the first thing people do is scream for them to lower their prices... Amazing how people are never satisfied.