Back when it launched, Sony's PlayStation 3 was something of a technological marvel for a home console — and it had the price to match. Despite a starting price of $499, Sony still lost money on the console, but it doesn't plan to have the same issue this time around with the PlayStation 4. As reported by Eurogamer, Sony addressed the issue on its earnings call this morning after announcing that it made its first net profit in five years. "Unlike PS3, we are not planning a major loss to be incurred with the launch of PS4," said Sony CFO Masaru Kato on the company's earnings call.

As we already know, the custom hardware in the PS3 was to blame: "At the time we developed PS3, we made a lot of in-house investments to develop the chip, the Cell chip. Development of the chip saw the silicon processing and all the facilities invested by us ourselves," said Kato. However, this time around Sony will be using a custom-designed AMD processor and what essentially boils down to a "supercharged PC architecture," according to lead system architect Mark Cerny. Kato confirmed that Sony won't have to make the same kind of investment it did with the PS3, saying that "we already have existing technology to incorporate and also product investment and all the facilities will now be invested by our partners, other foundries, so we don't have to make all the investment in-house." While it's far too early to tell how the PS4 will fare in its battle against Microsoft's next-generation console, the company is hoping it won't be the money drain that the PS3 was in its early days.