Eh, that article is making a big deal out of something that's been happening for a long time. Yes, many people turned their noses at the $500-$600 price tag, but the launch was not as "troubled" as everyone makes it out to be.
It's a given these days that a company will lose money on hardware for a certain amount of time - in fact, they plan on it. It's always played against the money they will make on other items, such as accessories, games, online fees, licensing fees from other publishers, etc.
Generally the system itself will not garner the manufacturer any money until right towards the end of its life-cycle, if at all. As the hardware becomes cheaper to produce, they will drop the retail price in order to entice more purchases, thus making them even more money off of the aforementioned add-ons. This will continue past a console's initial lifespan and part-way in to the next generation.
For Sony and the PS3 this is incredibly crucial as the system is not only carrying their next generation of game software, but is also essentially running as their Blu-ray flagship and their foray in to selling a proposed "multimedia centerpiece." The retail price is actually quite generous vs. their manufacturing costs, and if the system is able to successfully launch their new DVD format, any losses they take on the system will be
more than made up for in the long term. It's a gamble, to be sure: their UMD movie format, for example, did not exactly take off running. Fortunately for Sony, they already have two incredibly popular system lifecycles under their belt, and given their huge fanbase, this may turn out to be the right time to take this type of plunge. It just may take a while to resurface.
In short, larger installed user-base = mo' money. So they're willing to take a relatively minor loss on the hardware almost perpetually.