Sony is confident the launch of the PlayStation 4 will not result in "anything like" the losses suffered from the PlayStation 3 in 2007 and 2008. The PS3's launch is said to have resulted in losses topping $3.5 billion, which SCE boss Andrew House assured will not happen with the PS4.
"We will not generate anything like the losses we did for the PlayStation 3," House said, according Bloomberg. The reason for this, as it was explained by CFO Masaru Kato in an earlier investor call is because "the amount of investment [in PS4] is much, much smaller." While Kato couldn't give exact numbers, he explained, [The PS4] is a much more lighter platform in terms of investment because as for the chipset, at the core, we are taking off-the-shelf technology available and we are putting our proprietary technology around that core chipset."
This is a much different approach than Sony took with the PS3, when they spent "hundreds of millions of dollars" designing a chipset with Toshiba and IBM.
Despite the change in approach, Sony warned investors that recent shifts in currency exchange rates will hurt the company leading up to the PlayStation 4's launch. Sony "agreed to pay suppliers in U.S. currency to reduce costs as it made plans to challenge Microsoft in the U.S. video-market," Bloomberg reported. The move designed "to shield its PlayStation game unit from a strengthening yen," is now "backfiring" because of the dollar's increasing strength.
