The president has a plan

Jun 5, 2009 06:34 GMT  ·  By

Sony is a huge corporation involved in creating electronics for a wide variety of markets, and a segment that the Japanese company has invested in quite heavily is the gaming one, where its PlayStation brand is pretty powerful and reputed.

Sadly, sales aren't confirming that, as the flagship PlayStation 3 is losing to its rivals, the Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360. But in the future, this particular sector of Sony's business will reach a point where it will break even with the production and research costs, and eventually make a nice profit, at least according to Sony Computer Entertainment boss Kaz Hirai.

“We need to quickly bring our PlayStation business on a break-even level and later to profitability,” revealed the Sony executive while speaking with Japan Today. He said that shortcuts would be made towards this goal, by cost-cutting measures and the expansion of the PlayStation Network to other products, like the Bravia HDTVs or the Cybershot cameras.

“We need a strategy where buying a hardware is not the endpoint but instead a starting point that can offer new experiences to our customers.” the SCE boss continued. This has also been the strategy of the whole SCE group lately, as a lot of new services, like Home, and features have been added to the PlayStation 3, and, taking into account the brand new PSP Go!, it will see new things come to it as well.

Hirai also touched the subject of the often-rumored price cut, saying that the prices of the devices in the PlayStation division would be decided by “market developments.” Let's not forget that while the PS3 is struggling all around the world, in Sony's native Japan it is going pretty strong so the forecasts aren't all bad. Let's hope that Hirai will lead the PlayStation division to profitability in the near future.