It's kind of funny that some people blame sony for optimizing their production costs and so reduce their losses but on the other side don't mind that Nintendo sells a system with which they seem to make a profit due to the cheap components inside.
Because the Wii doesn't cost £500? Maybe it's because people are accustomed to newer revisions being better, not worse than their predecessors. Sony has intentionally and unnecessarily used over-priced and unproven hardware (Blu-Ray drives and Cell processors to name a few). They have created a product with no interesting games or utilities, that appeals only to a very narrow niche of technophiles.Sony don't want bigger profits - they want control. If they wanted profits, they wouldn't have run lik-sang out of business.