Sony Plans To Not Lose As Much Money Next Generation

In a recent interview with Eurogamer, Sony CFO Masaru Kato declared that they "are not planning a major loss to be incurred with the launch of the PS4," a wise business decision and a change for the company's computer entertainment division.

It was no secret that Sony lost money on the Playstation 3, caused by the simple fact that every PS3 was sold at a loss. The company's insistence upon developing a souped-up console and use of the Cell processor caused financial troubles and made it difficult for developers to port to the system. The Playstation 4's architecture, based around an x86 CPU, is very PC-like, and as a result is able to solve both of those challenges.

Note that consoles being sold at a loss isn't a rarity. Shortly after the Xbox 360's release, it was found that Microsoft was taking on average a $126 hit per console, and earlier this year an industry source explained that every console is sold at some kind of loss.

This will make the countdown to the PS4 and Nextbox's prices all the more interesting. While the PS4's architecture is certainly more friendly than the PS3's, a cynical part of me can't discount the possibility that Sony may be planning to take less of a hit because the price for the console is steep enough to make it all work.

[Source: Eurogamer]