Sony chief financial officer Masaru Kato indicates that the PlayStation unit will see operating income in line with previous years, despite the console transition. That is because the PS4 won’t have custom hardware like the Cell processor and an addition like a Blu-ray drive (which was expensive in 2006).
“Unlike PS3, we are not planning a major loss to be incurred with the launch of PS4,” said Kato. “At the time we developed PS3, we made a lot of in-house investments to develop the Cell chip. Development of the chip saw the silicon processing and all the facilities [as internal investments]. This time, we have a team working on chip development, but we already have existing technology to incorporate. All the facilities will now be invested by our partners, other foundries, so we don’t have to make all the investment in-house.”
Source: IRWebCasting.com
