Short answers, pulled from the story.
Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi announced a partnership with Toshiba and IBM on the 9th of March 2001. This collaboration aimed to create the Cell Broadband Engine processor for the next generation of consoles.
Manufacturing costs reached approximately US$840 for the premium model and US$805 for the base unit. These figures meant Sony lost roughly US$241 per premium console and US$307 per basic one.
Global sales reached approximately 87.4 million units by the 29th of May 2017 when production finally ceased. Japan accounted for 9.3 million units while North America sold 22.9 million copies and Europe purchased 30 million consoles.
Researchers used clusters to crack SSL encryption with twenty consoles in 2008 which led to security concerns. Later Slim and Super Slim versions eliminated this functionality entirely closing off the research community access after firmware update 3.21 released the 1st of April 2010 removed this capability citing security concerns.
The PlayStation 3 first released in Japan on the 11th of November 2006. It sold over 81,000 units within its first twenty-four hours.