Okay, let me just understand a few things.

1. Sony didn't earn 51M dollars, they had an operating income. What is the difference between those two?

2. Ps3 isn't at all undertracked hardware wise, rather slightly the opposite/right on.

3. Ps3's software is at 22M shipped to retailer and VGC has 18M to consumer. That's pretty spot on, as there is likely to be lots of software on the shelves.

^They do include all numbers, it's contradictory, so there is a mistake somewhere. All the numbers add up correctly on the other charts, so I'm inclined to think there has been a translation mistake in the statement.

I don't speak Japanese, but here's the original version. If someone who speaks Japanese could translate it would help with clearing this up.

Operating Income = Operating Revenue – Operating Expenses

Basically pre tax profit.

The software bit is confusing, but explainable:

They sold more units of software this Q (PS2 decreased by 11.8M units, while PSP+PS3 increased by 20.1M units - straight from the report) compared to last year, but they made less money doing so.

This explains both statements and has the virtue of fitting with what Sony put in their PDF :)

^ I thought that, but PS3 software should bring in more revenue than PS2 software, so it doesn't really make sense.

My comments:

Pro:

 + they made a profit in this qrt!
 + no drop in forecast for hardware or softrware for the FY
 + PSP looking very profitable for them

Neg:

 - they didn't make much profit
 - overall profit for Sony dropped significantly
 - they had three "mega" titles impact last qrt (GTA, MGS & GT) - won't happen again soon
 - any benefit from PS3 or PSP seems to be offset by less sales in PS2
 - general weakness in US is impacting all sections of Sony

Still can't believe they shipped less PS2 software than PS3. Then again - around 9m-10m of PS3 was MGS + GTA.

...

To put the $50m profit into focus: Sony would have made $50m-$80m "profit" from MGS + GTA software alone.

Next qrt is going to be pretty challenging, before the big Xmas qrt.

i keep hearing the 80 gig bundle is sold out, for x period of time when mgs4 came out, it has always and continues to be avalible here, i dont know if its just a glut of shipments to a region that did not need them, or what but i have counted going to various stores 670 units average of 6 units a store (slight rounding 112 stores) greater east tennessee area.

 Hmm...

Maybe the figure includes sold downloads?

There are couple of other points i will like to make..

1. i remember PS3 boss saying that they r going to get smaller 45nm Cell and 65nm Graphic chip in 3rd quarter ... so i think they r going to further reduce the cost of the PS3 hardware and i think it will be profitable pretty soon if they don't drop the price. so maybe now PS3 doesn't need PS2 hardware support to bear its losses... if in this quarter they have shown that the gaming division can earn a profit with higher PS3 sales then PS2 sales then i think future is bright..

2. the major concern is having blockbuster games one after the other... MGS has shown that a good exclusive can boast hardware also... so i think they need exclusives and top ones.

3. Your logic of $50 - $80m profit from software alone is also a little flawed as Sony pays for advertisements and must have paid for the bundles deal also.. similarly they have these free onlline service which most of the games use.. and they pay it themselves... So i believe we have to take the profit or loss of the entire division instead of picking one item from it... as they cost is distributed and so is profit over multiple sub divisions..

But i do agree next quarter is going to show that if there gaming division is strong enough to reduce price and safe from red ink or not... and its going to be really slow ... but its good to see Sony is performing reasonable cuz competition is always good.

slightly overtracked maybe, but not a few 100k, they are clearing the channels of 40gb and 80gb models seem to sell out so the difference of 400k (if you calculate it with right date) seems to be not that unreasonable, seems logical to me that they decrease shipments of the 40gb model 1-2 months before removing it from market to sell most 40gb models out before they get replaced.

anyway if vgcharts numbers are right we will probably see some shortages till the new models arive.