In an earnings call today by Sony following the release of their financials, Masaru Kato, Sony’s CFO, said that, “unlike PS3, we are not planning a major loss to be incurred with the launch of PS4.” To help quantify this statement, he went into much further detail:
At the time we developed PS3, we made a lot of in-house investments to develop the chip, the Cell chip. Development of the chip saw the silicon processing and all the facilities invested by us ourselves. But this time, yes we have a team working on chip development, but we already have existing technology to incorporate and also product investment and all the facilities will now be invested by our partners, other foundries, so we don’t have to make all the investment in-house.
Despite Sony not expecting to suffer a major loss when the PS4 comes out this holiday, they still didn’t make any mention of how well they expect it to sell before the end of this fiscal year, only making a small note of it with the following:
Sales are expected to increase significantly, primarily due to the planned introduction of the PlayStation 4 in the fiscal year ending 31st March 2014.
Operating income is expected to be essentially flat year-on-year primarily due to an increase in research and development expenses and marketing expenses related to the introduction of the PS4, offset by the impact of the above-mentioned increase in sales.
How many PS4s do you think Sony will sell before March 31st, 2014? Let us know in the comments below.
[Via]
