No because Nintendo was in it deep too before Nintendo Wii came along Sony will be fine, they started making the right moves recently, I think they will survive this time, but only because they got their act together.

Ah but you see, the difference between Ninny and Sony is that Nintendo, even during their darkest hour, actually made a positive profit. They almost never had losing quarters. And that is the key to Nintendos ability to survive. Even if they dont sell millions, they still make money. The N64 and the Cube thing were both actually profitable from the start to the end. They didnt front load the debt the way MS and Sony do it (or Sega before croaking).

Nintendo will probably never go away, because they have fantastic management and say what you want about MS, but the rumor mill says that they take care of their employees and people love working there but that is just hearsay from people I know in the San Fran area.

Simple as this; bigger company equals more equity equals bigger consequences when it starts to fail with a lot more to catch up.
The problem is when they start downsizing divisions with all divisions producing full product volume at a loss and then you downsize but technically need full product volume sold at profit to regain all the equity over time, it becomes a slight paradox and one hell of an issue.
But, Sony are doing fine, despite having tremendous losses in some divisions they've also made some on others and will get through it.
Seeing how hard Japan has been hit by the financial crisis, its almost a wonder they're not faring a whole lot worse.

the only reason why big companies fail less often is because they can downsize....
layoff employees, sale assets.... there are plenty of options to save the ship.

Eventually the ship will get smaller and smaller, then bankrupt, but the bankrupcy of a multibillion company does not happend unless there are heavy irregularities.

Sounds like you're just bitter cuz you didn't get promoted or something and other people did. How is comparing Sony to MSFT and Nintedo as a whole a measure of under performing it's "sector"? Gaming division is a small portion of the company, it's also a small portion of MSFT. MSFT makes most of their revenue from computer Software, someting Sony doesn't even compete with. Sony makes most of it's money in industries that MSFT doesn't even compete in and even makes products that compliment MSFT's main stream of revenue. Now let's compare MSFT to Google and Apple (it's two main competitors) and see how well MSFT stacks up against them? That would leave the conclusion that MSFT is the worst company ever because it doesn't compare to having the ROI that buying those two stocks would have had at some point in the last 10 years. 

So congratulations you have pointed out that Nintendo and MSFT have had a much higher stock price growth rate than Sony has over the past 20 or 30 years. But Sony's been kicking out a dividend since 83 annually and since 88 quarterly. Nintendo's only been paying a dividend since about 2002 and hasn't paid one since 2006. What does that say? Of course Nintendo's stock price is gonna keep climbing if it keeps holding on to all of it's money. That's what MSFT did too for a long time. It holds on to most of it's money instead of paying it as a dividend. You can't just compare the price indexes of each company. You have to take all those dividends from the 80's and 90's and turn them into today's dollar value. You can't just take a 10 cent dividend in 88 and slap an extra 10 cents on today's stock price and say "that's its value!"

people should realise that sony isn't just gaming they have a load of other products which are selling such as bravia televisions and such, i think their too huge too go bankrupt

#1 - Bitter? I was crushed because I loved games and I thought Sony would be my dream job. They were just bullies playing favorites and if you showed even a little talent they became hostile. The environment showed me the bad side to corporate behavior. I was just out of college at the time.

#2 - I took dividends into account for all my calculation. Even with the dividends, their business has performed poorly since '78. The Nasdaq index also pumps out dividends it just doesnt show up on most graph because its an index.

#3 - I was measuring Sony as a company not video games specifically. This thread was about the possibility of Sony going under. The author did not specify what part of Sony. I am fairly certain that he meant Sony as in the corporation not just the game division.

From a financial perspective they are a failure. Whevenever you can invest in 6% CD's and outperform a stock over 20 years, that company has serious issues.

You mean to tell me you sat there and calculated today's value for all 50+ dividend payments from Sony stock? And how did you calculate today's value? Did you use just inflations, did you use the Dow Jones average increase assuming investment in another stock, did you assume reinvestment into more Sony stock, or did you assume happiness was purchased with these dividends?

@#3 yeah it was and that was fine until you started to compare Sony as a whole to MSFT and Nintendo as a whole to determine whether or not it's been under performing in its "sector. " Financially it can't compete, but Sony is in a lot of highly competitive, low margin industries while MSFT is mostly in an extremely rare high margin market, which was borderline monopolistic. 

Yea its just addition and I did it all in my head (big wow). I even took into account splits. Not exactly rocket science.

+/- $0.15 cents immediate volitility isnt going to make a huge difference in Sony's long term numbers.

Reinvestment is meaningless in our calculation because I didnt assume reinvestment for any of the other stocks (except for the 6% CD because they are guaranteed). Regardless, because Sony has underperformed the index, if you had reinvested back into Sony, you would have actually made your performance even worse because the gap would have grown wider over time.

Remember SNE's divvy has historically only been about 0.75%... thats borderline pointless but I did take it into account. Look at it this way, if you reinvested using the Nasdaq which outperformed Sony back into the Nasdaq then your rate of profit would accelerate faster than if you had reinvested into Sony because the Nasdaq not only outperformed in terms of PPS but the index actually paid a larger dividend as well. The gap would grow larger and larger over time.

In my comparisons I used MSFT, Nintendo, a 6% CD, and the Nasdaq index. MSFT, SNE, and NTDOY are all concidered "tech" and Sony does indeed operate in high margins, or at least, they are supposed to simlar to other hardware makers. Thats the whole point to tech stocks and why they are valued so highly. High margins, low debt is what they are supposed to be all about. The fact is however, Sony is drowing in debt, and their margins are almost like a retail store with huge costs thanks to R&D and manufacturing. This is very bad for a tech company.

I needed a basis of comparison. It doesnt mean anything to say that Sony made 100% since 1999 if you do not state that inflation has been about 30% and other related tech companies have gained a double or triple return in the same period of time. Now we can do a comparison and from that we can use historical data from other companies in similar situations to extrapolate what might happen. None of it written in stone, but its a good way to learn about a companies behavior. A lot of us stock folks knew, as far back as 10 years ago, that GM would go BK over time if their behavior did not change (union contracts, size, debt etc none of it made any financial sense). Sony is going down a similar path but they are decaying at a slower rate thanks mostly, to more favorable labor contracts, or if you ask me, legal labor abuse. GM, like Sony, had great products too, and they still do, but the company was miss-managed and corrupt inside out.

Lastly, lest we not forget, Sony is well known for their predetory competitive behavior, they just failed most of the time but it wasnt because they didnt try. How many times did they try to corner (aka monopolize) markets on video formats? They even tried it with CD formats, and compression formats. How many gaming companies did they buy out back in the PS1 and PS2 days just to take games away from Nintendo and Sega? This is all normal business for all these companies. Heck, even Nintendo did the same thing back in the Sega vs Nintendo days. I think we should have tighter rules to make all these behaviors illegal, but I dont think any of them care what I think and there are times when a temporary monopoly is needed but not in anything these companies are doing.

sigh... we will never see the end of sony =] they are a multi cagillionbillionmillion company, if they go down... it will be funny.