The Sales Cross Over: It's Real. What are the implications industry wide?

[Bodhesatva]

TheBigFatJ said:

Lost tears of Kain said:
You know that microsoft mad somewhere of 14 billion last year or fiscal year (read it) microsoft is in this for the long hall they want to beat out sony and take its place. BTW sony is like microsoft they are loosing billions on the ps3 right now but they see that if they can win the blue ray war they it will come back as profit later years, its the same microsoft sees about the gaming industry

 

Sony is not like Microsoft because the playstation brand consistently generates a profit with no consecutive fiscal years of loss. Microsoft hasn't generated a single fiscal year of profit yet, and has lost an average of more than one billion per year on their xbox division.

The problem, of course, is that Sony's trend of no consecutive years of fiscal losses is almost certainly going to be broken this year. Sony lost 2 billion last year, and they've already lost 300 million this year (which is an increase in losses over the same time last year).

In the past two years, Sony and Microsoft have lost an almost equal amount of money in the video game industry: 2.3 to 2.7 billion in favor of Sony. However, this includes Microsoft's 1 billion dollar warranty write off, and thus it seems quite likely that within the next two quarters -- perhaps even before then -- Microsoft will surpass Sony in profits (or less losses) since 2005.

Sony used to be better at making money in gaming than Microsoft. That is no longer the case.