But a new BusinessWeek report featuring an iSuppli teardown of the PS3 finds that the total cost of components for the console is now $448.73 versus the $399 retail price tag.
The console is still losing money per unit sold, but not to the extent that it was initially. In 2006, iSuppli had figured the PS3's bill of materials to amount to over $840 for the 60GB model and $805 for the 20GB model, which retailed for $599 and $499, respectively.
Game console makers Microsoft and Sony initially lose money on hardware, but offset costs with first- and third-party game sales.
iSuppli believes PS3 hardware will break even in 2009. "Every time we do a teardown, it's sort of backward-looking," said iSuppli's Andrew Rassweiler. "Sony is one step ahead of us and probably has plans to re-spin the hardware to reduce the costs yet again."
Sony has reduced the total number of PS3 parts from 4,048 to 2,820, the report said. iSuppli estimated the cost of the PS3's Cell processor to be $46 currently, down from $89 at launch. The console's Nvidia GPU is now $58, down from $129 initially.