That's how the market used to work, but hasn't been the case for generations. Nintendo has sold every platform from the Wii on at a profit. The PS5 was sold at

That's how the market used to work, but hasn't been the case for generations. Nintendo has sold every platform from the Wii on at a profit. The PS5 was sold at a slight loss at launch, Sony got production costs down enough to be profitable about a year later (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-04/sony-raises-profit-outlook-as-gaming-demand-stays-resilient?srnd=technology-vp https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-04/sony-rais...). I'm less sure about Microsoft, my understanding is that the Series X is profitable and the Series S is a loss leader. However, both of them can be put into a developer mode and you can run your own (or other people's) code.