The other day, Sony said it would rely on motion control, 3D gaming, and the PlayStation Network to drive sales in 2010. To me, 3D gaming is a pipe dream, at least for the next five years or so, and today I’ve got a little proof.

XpanD, the company that produced the glasses for Avatar has said a pair of their shutter glasses will start at $70 a pair and run up to $150. That’s on top of the premiums you’ll pay for the TV, though some sets will likely ship with glasses included.

For a family of four, you’re looking at about $300 just for the glasses. Granted, your average family of four won’t be gaming in 3D together, but think about having your friends over. The expense of the hardware is going to dictate that you enjoy your 3D games alone, a trend the industry has been moving away from for the last decade.

Until costs come down, there’s no way Sony can expect real revenue from 3D next year. It’s just too expensive.

When you consider the NPD data for 2009, it’s hard to imagine why Sony thinks it will have such a great 2010. John Koller, Sony’s director of hardware marketing, talked with Gamepro about what’s in store for for Sony fans next year, a plan that hopes to stand on the “three big pillars” of motion control, 3D gaming, and the PlayStation Network.

You’ll have to excuse my sarcasm, because I do think Sony has a big year ahead. The biggest its had in a while, anyway. The PS3 Slim is selling like mad and there are some great games out for the system. The only “pillar” I see working in 2010, though, is PSN. Motion gaming already exists on another system, one that is much more family friendly than a console like the PS3. And 3D gaming? That’s a pipe dream for 2010. Hell, I’d call that a pipe dream for 2015. There just won’t be enough 3D TVs to drive any kind of reasonable business for a game system.

That doesn’t keep Koller from claiming that Sony just might hit the “Holy Grail of gaming,” by “placing you as a consumer into the game physically.” I think he’s nuts. Read the full interview at Gamepro.

Sony’s Q2 fiscal-year earnings report reads a bit like a good horror story. The most interesting for our purposes is that “networked products and services” division, which includes the Playstation brand. It also includes a whopping $654 million loss this quarter, which Sony attributes to declining PS2 sales and appreciation of the yen. The PS2 sold some 600,000 units less this year than last. Ouch.

Maybe worse, though, is that the numbers have given math nerds around the web enough info to figure that the PS3 has cost Sony roughly $4.7 billion over the course of its life. That’s a monstrous figure, particularly since this is Sony’s third-gen console. Microsoft lost about as much with the original Xbox, but the 360 hasn’t hurt Redmond nearly as badly.

There is some hope, though. As manufacturing costs continue to plummet and sales rise with the PS3 Slim, Sony thinks the brand will become profitable as early as next year. That would be a hell of a turnaround, and frankly one I doubt we’ll see, but I’m willing to hope a little for Sony’s sake.

Sony’s 10-year plan for the PS3 finally seems to be coming together…halfway into its life cycle. As a Netflix press release announced today, the PS3 will be adding the ability to stream content from the rental service. The new feature will be offered free of charge to PS3 owners;all that’s required is a subscription to the Netflix service, which can cost as little as $9 a month. By contrast, the same service for the Xbox 360 requires that users have a gold subscription to Xbox Live, which runs $50/year.

There is a catch, though. While services like that on the Xbox 360 give users access to BD Live content, the PS3 version requires a special disc for the drive in order to access BD Live content. It’s a small trade-off, particularly if you consider the $50 upcharge for the 360.

At any rate, the PS3 is finally becoming the console we all wanted it to be. Sure, it’s all coming a bit late, but better to have these things than not.

It looks like Sony is willing to part with its 250GB PS3 Slim as a stand-alone console (i.e. not part of its many bundles). The company announced the new SKU today, which will run you $350 when it launches next month. The company will still offer the standard PS3 at the 80GB/160GB SKUs, making it pointless to get anything other than a PS3 Slim.

I’m still surprised Microsoft hasn’t announced the same. As the holidays edge closer it seems prudent to get a top-of-the-line system out to market as that splurge gift from mom and dad or the elusive fat, bearded guy.

If you’re big into downloaded content or digital storage for your various media, spend the extra $50. It more than doubles your drive capacity for what feels like pennies in comparison with other console storage media.

I don’t know what’s been happening with console manufacturer’s recently but they just don’t have their shit together. It’s leak after leak, and really none of them have been that exciting. Price drops are cool, yes, and so are bigger hard drives, but the fact that we’ve known about all of them before they’ve been officially confirmed seems sloppy and a little lazy. Can we blame the recession?

Well there’s another leak on the market today. Amazon UK has posted a 250GB PS3 Slim. It’s the first Slim model with that extra-large hard drive to be seen outside the Europe and Japan bundles. Is Sony saving the US bundles for the holiday season? If they are, it seems a safe bet we’ll know about it well in advance of the release, and any official announcement from Sony.

Shortly after Microsoft announced the 250GB Xbox 360 bundle for Modern Warfare 2, images started to surface showing a PS3 Slim bundle with a similarly sized hard drive and Uncharted 2. Sony has since denied the bundle for US, but made no comment with regard to other regions.

The 250GB console first showed up in the FCC on the same day Sony launched the PS3 Slim. According to Eurogamer, a trusted retailer has confirmed the new SKU in three varieties, each bundled with a different game. It looks like the bundle will run approximately $500 in the UK and will ship with either em>Uncharted 2, Assassin’s Creed II, or Gran Turismo 5. Sony has yet to confirm any of this in writing, but if the new SKU coincides with the game launch dates, each bundle would likely be available for a limited time. The games rumored to be included launch October 23rd, November 20th, and in Q4 2009, respectively.

Everyone knows the console hardware business is not the place to make money. Not at first, anyway. After the cost of the internals start to come down you might see some profit, but even then, it’s small. That model holds true for Sony’s new PS3 Slim, a leaner version of the PS3. Sony exec Kaz Hirai told the Times Online that the PS3 Slim will lose money, just like the earlier model.

That really doesn’t come as a surprise. Sure, the technology is a few years old, but the size is not. I think anyone reading this blog knows that shrinking an existing technology is the most surefire way to increase the cost.

Hirai’s response when questioned about profitability is certainly strange, though.

If you’re just talking about the hardware alone, the quick answer is yes. That makes good headlines, but I don’t actually know that that’s the true nature of the business that we’re all in, whether it’s PlayStation, Xbox or the Wii. I think the better indicator is to look at the business as a whole platform, to ask: are you profitable in terms of the hardware, software and peripherals. And the answer to that question is yes on a gross profit level since the last fiscal year.

I’m not sure when this kind of news made for a great headline, but I am writing about it, so I suppose what he says is true. I just think it’s odd that he words things like this is a new concept to anyone who would be inclined to read the article. We know that, and sometimes we read about stuff we already know.

If you thought you’d have to wait until September for that new PS3 Slim, think again. Multiple sources confirm that several retailers not only have the new console in stock, they’re actually selling them for the official $299 price.

Word first reached me today via Gizmodo, which ran a story on a Florida man who found a palette of consoles sitting center stage at his local Best Buy. He even grabbed a pictured. Over the course of the day other sites started to pick up on the news, and by late afternoon, people were apparently scouring their local electronic stores to see if they could get a hold a PS3 Slim early.

From the sounds of things, it hasn’t been very hard. A lot of Best Buy locations have the console in stock and ready to sell. Retailers like Target and Wal-Mart are also rumored to have stock, though most of them haven’t made it to the floor yet. Regardless, there’s no reason you should still be reading this. Go get yourself a PS3 Slim!

If you were thinking about waiting to order your new PS3 Slim, thinking maybe Sony will sort out the whole backwards compatibility thing before launch, you might want to reconsider. Amazon is predicting a shortage of the new console in the US so they’re limiting purchases to one per customer. In the UK things are looking a little less strict, with limits at five per customer.

“In an effort to provide as many customers as possible with the opportunity to purchase PlayStation 3 120GB, we are limiting the total number of PlayStation 3 120GB units that can be purchased. As a result, each household may only purchase one PlayStation 3 120GB unit,” Amazon said earlier this week.

The new PS3 announcement has not been able to help Sony stock, which continues to slide.