Posted on Wednesday, January 16 2008 @ 1:10 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
When Sony launched its PS3 console in November 2006 research firms estimated the 60GB model had a manufacturing cost of $840 but in little more than 12 months the costs have more than halved:
Along with consumers, Sony felt the pain of its high console price at the time of the PlayStation 3 launch in November 2006. iSuppli estimated that the initial cost of manufacture for the console was $840.35 for the 60GB model.
Since then, however, Sony has managed to close the gap considerably on its loss on every unit sold. Nikko Citigroup’s Kota Ezawa, quoted by BusinessWeek, says that each PS3 costs Sony around $400 to manufacture. Ezawa estimates that SCEI will lose $1.4 billion this fiscal year, following last year's $2.1 billion loss.
The falling price of PlayStation 3 components is thanks to the increase in yield and supply of blue-violet laser diodes used in the high-definition optical drive in the console. Another large help in reducing costs was the Cell Broadband Engine chip’s shrink to 65nm.
Source: DailyTech
