During their most recent earnings conference call, Sony CFO Masaru Kato confirmed that unlike the PS3, the PS4 will not be a black hole of profits at launch.
The PS3 had an expensive and proprietary Cell processor and included a high-end early model Blu-ray drive before Blu-rays were mainstream.
"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."
The new system, set for release in November, will use an x86 AMD Jaguar CPU.
"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."
The new system, set for release in November, will use an x86 AMD Jaguar CPU.
