It’s no secret: PlayStation 3 sales aren’t going great, and the console is sold for less than it actually costs to be produced. The Japanese company hopes that its cost-reducing strategies for certain key components of the PlayStation 3 would pay up and drive the development cost to be equal to the retail price the the console.

At present time, Sony loses around $200 per sold console.

Sony executive VP Nobuyuki Oneda told a Citigroup Securities analyst during a Q&A session that Sony plans to achieve this goal by March 2008, the end of the fiscal year. The company’s development cost reduction plan is focused on three key elements: the Cell processor, RSX graphics chip and Blu-ray optical components. NextGen reports:

“The removal of the negative margin will be when all of these factors have come out. Maybe, marginally, we could achieve this during this year. For the negative margin to go away, the big trigger would be the cost-down in the Cell and RSX semiconductors. They are the key, and also optical pick-up is another factor, significantly.”

Hopefully, Sony’s plan also includes further price drops for the PlayStation 3. Microsoft will most certainly trim the prices for its Xbox 360 line up in the future, and Sony can’t really afford to let the prices gap between the two rival products get larger than it is right now.

Source: Portalit