Weak yen could help Sony's PS3 succeed

The all-time weakness of the yen against the euro and pound could "save" the delicate economics of the PlayStation3 games console, and rescue Sony from an estimated four years of losses on its complex machine.

New calculations by UBS suggest that if the historic strengths of sterling and the euro against the yen continue into 2007, Sony will make only a tiny loss on each console when the PS3 is launched in Europe next March.

Recent reports by independent engineers who have stripped the PS3 to its component parts suggest that each unit is currently costing Sony a little over Y90,000 ($763). This in turn causes the company a loss of about Y30,000 every time a PS3 is sold in the US or Japan.

But based on analysts' assumptions that the high-end PS3 will be sold at retail for about €590 ($757) in Europe and Britain, Sony will be losing less than Y3,000 per unit when the revenues from those markets are translated back into yen.

Basically, European people are getting screwed in every possible way. They are getting a late release and they have to pay more for it than anyone else. I'm so glad I live in America.

Nothing new there, happens with every console. We pay more than the US and Japan, the 360 is very cheap in Japan yet still expensive here.

ill wait for a used unit, im to busy playing with my PSP to be concerned with 600 euro pieces of electronics, its just too mch money for what it means to me.there are no games that i simply MUST own on any of the next gen consoles, and the games id most like to/ enjoy are probably the Wii games, which is a heck of a lot cheaper than the other 2 competing companies.