Your original point was that Sony and MS needs to make money and not lose money on hardware. Fact is, Sony lost money even if it was a small amount. Why you trying to insert $150-$200 per box loss to make a point? You could've just put in $1000 loss per box instead.
You keep pretending that the PS4 didnt turn a profit in less than a year.
You cant compare this gen to other gens if you skew the comparison. The 360 took over 2 years to make a profit and lost a lot more money per console at launch than PS4. Same with PS3. Which took longer to make a profit, in fact they wrote off losses.
Ps4 losses were marginal and quickly flipped around so the concept of taking losses on hardware and making it up with software barely applies since most of this gen Sony has made a profit on hardware with the PS4. Anything else is a straw man.
This gen is nothing like the snes to 360 gens were consoles were sold at a loss for long periods and made up on software. Companies can't afford losses like that anymore.
Sony cant lose $200 a box in 2020 with some of the specs being thrown around here for $399. That's $20 million in losses every 100k sales. That $200 isn't random, that's likely how much Sony would lose at $399 with some of the specs thrown around.
People just expect Sony to go bankrupt for $399