It's not I saying that Sony has always made a unit profit on each PS2 sold, but Sony themselves claiming that. In both the press conferences for follow-up questions pertaining to the 2000 and 2001 stock report for investors, which were available online in audio files on Sony's website for months after the publication of their annual report, Sony openly discussed how the PS2 is profitable on each unit sold.
End of short version. Everything else beyond that is the how and why everything works the way it does. Is Sony going to go out and make a press release about it? "Hey! We're making $100 profit per console sold while MS loses $100 on each Xbox!" Of course not. People want their hardware as cheap as possible with the perception that it cost a lot. Consumers want a deal. They want their perceived value. It helps to justify why games are $50 brand new instead of the $19 they should be. Others want to believe that companies like Sony made the PS2 because they love video games and profit from a console sale goes against everything they believe in. A number of people are offended at the idea a console manufacturer would make a profit as they've lived the lie of every console is sold below cost for years. Plus others will say "there must be a price drop coming!" and push off purchasing a console.
Plus for us to accept that Sony is lying and that they are in fact losing money per console sold, that means we have to accept that hundreds of employees are all conspiring to cover the truth and risking their personal fortunes and possible jail time to cover a secret that would be discovered eventually.
Let's keep our eyes on the ball people. Sony has sold more than fifty million PS2s. Lets pretend Sony has been lying to us all along and that the PS2 is a money pit. Assuming a true cost/price different of $200 (from the originally claimed cost of $100 below retail to $100 above retail) on fifty million units, that's ten billion dollars. TEN BILLION. People are going to notice ten billion dollars missing from the bank accounts. Hell, let's say Sony isn't even losing any money at all but instead are selling at cost. Ok, so it's only five billion dollars missing from the bank account. Don't dare to try and claim that this number could possibly hidden as as a rounding error.
It's not like it's some great secret that Sony makes money hand over fist on the PS2. While Nintendo, Sega, and Microsoft all outsource production, Sony makes everything themselves. Outsourcing means that someone else is in the loop who has to make a profit. No one works for free.
Don't blame the messenger if you are angry that I opened your eyes to the economic realities of this market.
please keep on topic