A lot of people are talking about Sony losing money on the PS3 release, cause they'll be selling the console for cheaper than it took them to build the console and ship it out to retailers. People are kicking up a fuss cause, "OMG, Sony's going to lose money! What if they go bankrupt?"
What most people don't know about the gaming industry is that game developers have to pay the console companies in order to develop a game on their platform. That is, if you're making a game for the Wii or the PS3, you actually have to pay Nintendo or Sony money to do it. That's why a lot of independent, startup game developers choose to release their wares via PC, because they don't have to pay the amounts of money that Nintendo and Sony ask for.
I'm sure a lot of you remember way back in the day when Sony first released the Playstation. We found a lot of our old favorite game developers suddenly abandoning Nintendo (you guys might remember Square and Capcom as prime examples) and deciding to develop for the Sony platform instead. The reason they did that wasn't only because CDs hold more data than cartridges do, Nintendo's prices for developing for the N64 were too high for even established game developers to handle. Sony's rates were much cheaper, which is why there was a mass exodus to the Playstation and you won't be finding as many hits on the N64 as there were for the PSOne.
So yes, Sony is going to take a hit on the price of the console. But also remember that people who own consoles also have to play games. Not only do the platform developers get some cash when a game is developed for their console, they also get a significant cut of the game's retail price. If the PS3 becomes just as popular as the PS2, Sony will still be raking it in despite taking a loss on the console, which I'm sure they deemed necessary in order to get the penetration rate they wanted.
If you guys remember, one of the things that killed the Sega Dreamcast at the beginning (besides the ease which it took to hack the console) was their complete lack of release titles. The PS3 has a whole shitload of games scheduled to be concurrent with console release, many of them sequels to big hits such as Devil May Cry 4 and Metal Gear Solid 4, while the others span across all genres of gaming. I have no doubts that Sony will do well with the release of the PS3.
That said, since I know Sony hardware traditionally sucks it up, I'm going to wait until at least some hardware revisions come out before I get one.
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