The Video Game Critic

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6170776.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=newstop&tag=newstop;title;6

As for the culprit behind those projected losses, they appear to be due to the game division and then some. Bloomberg said responses from five of the analysts pegged Sony's game group as posting a quarterly loss of 121 billion yen ($1 billion), completely wiping out expected profits from the rest of the company's divisions. The gaming business more than offset gains from Bravia HDTVs and the box office performance of Spider-Man 3, according to the report.

Kind of like the Orlando Bloom movie where Spidermans girfriend MJ plays a physcotic flight attendant who gets involed with Orlando Bloom who is going back to Elizabethtown to bury his dead dad shortly after getting fired from his job for losing a billion dollars on his stupid shoe design that fails utterly and completly.

Its not the worst chick flick I have ever seen, and when I read this, I remembered the great screne where his boss, Alec Baldwin, leads Orlando around the coporate HQ and shows him all of the departments, divisions and diversions he is going to have to axe as a result of the failure.

Here's the real numbers:

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6170827.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=newstop&tag=newstop;title;1

For the fourth quarter alone, Sony reported an operating loss of $914 million from its game division, attributable primarily to the PS3.
 
For its full fiscal year 2006, Sony's gaming group posted revenue up 6.1 percent to $8.6 billion, but suffered an operating loss of nearly $2 billion.
 
PS3 maker's game division posts $914 million loss for the first three months of 2007
 
I know that this was all part of the plan, build up a strong user base and make up for it with 5-10 years of software royalty, while simultaneously pumping up Blu-ray over HD-DVD. But, .....

Sony's figures peg PS3 shipments at 5.5 million systems for the fiscal year, with 13.2 million games to go along with them. As for how its older systems fared, Sony reported hardware sales were down for the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable. The company shipped 14.2 million PS2s for the year, down 2 million from the year before, while PSP shipments totaled 8.4 million, down 5.7 million from the year before. Since then, PSP shipments have slowed significantly, with less than 1 million PSPs arriving in North America and Europe since September of 2006, and a negligible amount in the January-March quarter.
 
I would love to know what Sony considers their "breakeven" benchmark for PS 3, how many years will it take them to get there?

I also wonder what they will follow up with eventually on the handheld market.

Generally speaking, for the last few years you would read that Sony as a whole was underperforming, and banked on their gaming division. Sir Howard was brought in to restructure the company, but one has to wonder: Are they getting hit most hard in the worst possible place at the worst possible time?

I truly wonder if Sony will survive. They are fighting Microsoft, Apple and an amazingly resurgent Nintendo, all at the same time. Who would have imagined this senerio even 3 years ago, when people were dancing on Nintendo's grave, anticipating Sony to break Nintendo's hold on the handhold market, and kick them into the gutter. Amazing.