SONY Drives for PS3 Market Share at Launch

SONY spends a fortune to launch the PS3:

Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed: Tearing Down the PS3: Losing Money on Every Sale, etc.: iSuppli has out its teardown of the PS3, and it contains some fascinating factoids:

• Sony is losing an astounding $306.85 to $241.35 in manufacturing and component costs per PS3, depending on the configuration
• Cell processor costs are a rock-bottom $85
• In the entire history of iSuppli's teardowns it has only seen three semiconductors with 1,200 or more pins; the PS3 alone has three such chips

The size of the loss per unit is, my recollection, the largest in the history of the gaming industry. It is a fairly remarkable demonstration of how the industry has changed, especially when you consider that the PS3 is delivering supercomputer levels of performance.