While Sony has succeeded in winning the HD disc format war with the help of its PS3, according to Sony’s fiscal 2008 annual report, the console has cost Sony about $3.3 billion in losses over the past two years. To make the console's price more attractive at the time of launch and bring it closer to HD DVD player prices at the time, Sony priced the console well below its estimated production cost of over $800 per console to manufacture. The retail prices for the console varied between $500 and $600 when it launched in 2006.
Sony has warned investors that it may have problems recovering its massive investment in the PS3, unless the sales improve enough. Despite the wide range of PS3 software and 28.3% sales increase in its 2008 financial year, Sony reported a $1.2 billion operating loss. In its 2008 financial year, Sony's PS2 and PSP consoles have had strong sales with 13.73 and 13.89 million units sold worldwide respectively compared to 9.29 million PS3 consoles. When it comes to software, the PS2 has had 154 million unit sales; nearly three times that of the PSP and PS3 software unit sales.
If Sony would have sold its PS3 priced at its production cost or even a little higher, it would have be interesting to see how well the console would have sold over this same period and what way the format war would have gone, considering HD DVD was the leading format before the PS3 launched.
Further statistics can be viewed in this source Gamesdog report.
