They seem to go back and forth on whether they're loss leaders subsidized by more expensive games and captive paid online services or mediocre hardware sold at a premium to their captive audience. Last gen was AFAIK the loss leader phase (and the one before that was outdated, dogshit hardware sold at a premium from the start), so now we're on to the squeezing their audience for as much as they can phase, and in another 5 years they'll do another loss leader console, and so on.