Old news. M$ had $31B plus in cash reserves as of summer 2009 and $15B profit if I remember correctly That is for a down year with problems moving Vista. With Windows 7 doing well they should be up overall this year. The losses from EDD last gen and the $1B write-off for rrod are not something they are desperate to recover.
A Famitsu article said the last 6 months of 2009 saw EDD profits jump by 100% to 658m. With the one quarter reported this year that's roughly $.8B in 9 months. Expect $1B to the good when yearly totals are in. That is despite carrying Zune and Games for Windows which I doubt show profit at all. The bottom line for this div. seems deliberately obscured as noted in the argument above and we may never know where losses are incurred or profit generated. R & D, production and associated costs for Kinect and the slightly new box will need to be claimed somewhere soon.
SCE lost the modest gains from PS2 and PSP and another $890m on their last full-year fiscal. This despite a strong turnaround in SW. The obvious conclusion is that even last holiday the PS3 was selling at a loss per unit sold. Some portion of the $.89B must be related to the Slim redesign as well. Even this is old news and I hope to see plenty of black ink for this year.
Nintendo are inscrutable warlocks of unprecedented pregnosticatory power.
I seriously doubt either Ninty or M$ will ever pay a penny to use Sony's BR disc tech when there is any possible alternative.
Essay Pro