Sony's new PlayStation 4 is selling well at its introductory price point of $399, but how much does it cost to make? Research firm IHS iSuppli, long known for its consumer electronics teardowns and cost analyses, has told AllThingsD that the components and the cost of assembly comes to roughly $381.

Two particularly expensive components are the console's AMD-designed APU and its 8GB of GDDR5 RAM, which cost about $100 and $88 respectively. Driving up the cost of the chip is its large size—Chipworks says it measures about 348mm2, owing to the eight CPU cores and dedicated-class GPU that's integrated into its die. As IHS points out, the larger your chip is, the greater the chance that some part of it will have a defect on it somewhere, which drives yields down and pushes costs up. (Unlike standard CPUs and GPUs, it's not possible to recoup any of that cost by selling lower-performance versions of the chips with the defective sections disabled.) Other notable costs include the 500GB hard drive (about $37), the Blu-ray drive ($28), and the controller ($18).

What isn't factored into the teardown cost are research and development, advertising, and shipping costs associated with the console, all of which are likely more than sufficient to eat up the remaining margin. Bear in mind that this is all based on guesswork, however—IHS may be in the ballpark, but the actual cost to Sony will differ depending on the component deals the company has managed to cut.

Further Reading Sony taking big hit on each PS3 sold; Xbox 360 in the black

That Sony is making little (or perhaps even losing a little) on each PlayStation 4 sold comes as no surprise. Selling game console hardware at a loss or at break-even pricing is a time-honored tradition—the thinking is that you get as many consoles as you can into the hands of gamers as quickly as possible and then make money back on the games. The hardware also becomes cheaper to make as manufacturing processes improve. Still, as IHS notes, the situation is far better than it was for the PlayStation 3 , which sold for a higher $599 but cost an estimated $805 to build because of then-new, expensive components like its custom Cell processor and Blu-ray drive. At the very least, a manufacturing cost closer to the actual selling price will give Sony a chance to sell the PS4 at a profit more quickly, and it could also lead to quicker and more aggressive price cuts down the line.