Following announcements this week of Sony losses, some 5.3% over the last year, the Japanese giant has announced a possible change in pricing strategy for their next-gen console.

The games division has reported even bigger losses, down around 54.2 billion yen ($455 million) in the third quarter, with some, including Sony's senior vice president, Takao Yuhara, suggesting the losses could be as high as 200 billion yen (approx $1.6 billion) at the end of the financial year.

Traditionally, the period after a console launch leads to losses, a gamble, that if paid off, will see profits being recouped from software sales.

The production delays started a vicious circle which forced the company into flying the consoles to market rather than shipping them, and promotion’s cost were higher than expected too.

Yuhara let it be known that the idea was to have the games division breaking even by the end of the next fiscal year, March 2008.

He commented, "Such factors, including price cuts to some extent, are factored in" the company's break-even plans. No firm date was given for cuts though, or how much it would be. The current price is $599 for the 60GB model, EUR599 in Europe, £425 in the UK.

The company has already cut the PS3s price in Japan, where the console was launched on November 11, dropping the 20GB version to 49,980 yen ($429), 10,000 yen ($85) down on the original price.

>> Link - Official Site/Playstation
>> Read - PS3 price will fall