According to SCE CEO Andrew House, Sony won’t be seeing a loss on each PlayStation 4 sold on the same level as with the PlayStation 3. Speaking to Bloomberg, House stated that, “We will not generate anything like the losses we did for the PlayStation 3.”
CFO Masaru Kato echoed this sentiment in a recent earnings call, saying that the investment in the PS4 is significantly lesser than it was for the PS3. “There were no manufacturing capacity or technology to manufacture these chipsets. So the amount of investment that went into PS3 was quite big.”
But that’s not the case with PS4, thanks to its decidedly PC-like architecture. “At the core, we are taking off-the-shelf technology available and we are putting our proprietary technology around that core chipset,” Kato said. “The amount of investment is much, much smaller. I cannot give you the absolute amount.”
Sony’s losses with the PS3 have been well documented, and the console itself didn’t start to become profitable for the company until 2011 (having launched in 2006).