I'm going to guess these numbers are just for the division related to their consoles.

Wow MS is really in the red!  its gonna take them years and years of profitability to get in the black.

That chart is missing early PS1 years. With those numbers Sony's gaming division is still in black.

I thought this was fairly common knowledge and was even referrenced, on the MS side, in the recent stuff around investors.

MS is still very much in 'sunk costs' mode with regards to gaming, where it's making a profit currently but it still hasn't seen a true return in excess of the original costs sunk into getting into the industry.

Sony's situation is perhaps slightly misaligned given the focus, as I don't see PS1 and therefore it may be that in total, over all there consoles to date, it would still be in the 'black' to use the relative terms of the OP as really the PS1 data should be included as the goal seems to be looking at all consoles combined profits/losses to date.

The red for PS3 really shows how the high cost of development and slow start hurt financially, although I guess that's easing now.

I'd imagine Nintendo's version of that analysis would look exceedingly black.

OP doesn't say what any of those numbers are supposed to be and it should be noted that SEC filings have Microsoft in the black for at least the past 4 years and Sony in the black for the past two.

Post like these are why I always people with zero understanding of business or even how to read a financial statement should avoid making statements about business and finance outside of, "games cost money" and simple things like that.

If you look in absolute terms like that, then yes, they're both in the red. But seriously....going back to 1998? That's called spin. We all know that in the current scheme of things, Sony has lost billions and M$ had reached profitability a few years ago (in terms of video games).

But hey, if whoever made this graph wants to say "hey, M$ lost over 10x as much money as Sony", then hey, be my guest.

I guess all those development studios that are technically in the black for having amazing sales during the PS1/PS2 era should still be around, despite losing millions these past few years and being forced to shut down

Why the numbers doesn't match company annoucements? Is this just about only the gaming divisions?

If so, what about the years? Are they considering the fiscal year itself or just the year the announcement is out?

So many things unclear in this one.

for Microsoft it's the EAD division.

For sony it's the gaming division up until Q1 2010 when it was renamed "Networked Products & Services"

I just saw the whole table, i see it now, both are in the red :p

i blame IE8

I believe I read somewhere that sony doesn't expect their Networked Products & Services division to be proffitable until 2012

If you can find the PS1 numbers feel free to give´em, this is as far as the internet can provide aparantly. Anyway, I'm willing to bet that during 1994-1995 Sony was in the red on their games division, launching a console is always expensive.

these numbers are regarding their consoles divisions only, not the actual companies

I believe that this is more of an indicator of how bad things are in the Sony camp, I know that companys don´t just magically keep all their proffits in a vault, but this shows that they have been loosing quite a lot these last years