MikeB on 09 January 2008
@ johnlucas
The core rule in business is to PROFIT
Yes, but there are long term and short term aspects. I am sure R&D, promotions, production costs for Blu-Ray and PS3s are still far away from being fully earned back, however Sony's long term perspective may be a lot better.
Sometimes you will have to make significant investments early on in the game to generate huge profits later on. If they wouldn't have done these investments their current bank balance could have been much better, but 10 years down the road be significantly worse compared to what could have been.
Also do note Sony is an important HDTV producer, this devision has done excellent business last christmas, so from a wider perspective HDTVs are great but without much HD content there's far less reason to buy them.
