PS3 Cheaper Than Ever to Make, Sony Still Losing Money on Every
One  Making a PS3 today costs Sony less than half of what it did
at launch—$445, down from $840. And Sony, wouldn't you know,
still loses a bucketful of money on every system.  So, at
launch, the PS3 cost Sony about $840 to make, according to
iSuppli, and they sold them for $599, resulting in a tidy loss
of $200 a pop. By stripping out over 1200 parts and features
like PS2 backward-compatibility, Sony has cut their costs to
just $445 per PlayStation 3. Which they sell for 400 bucks,
meaning they still lose about $45 a system.  That, friends, is
why you didn't see a cheap PS3 for Christmas, and why you won't
see one until deeper into next year at the earliest, even as the
Xbox 360 outsold it 3-to-1 on Black Friday. [BusinessWeek via
PlayStation Forums via PS3Fanboy]