How do overall corporate profits effect video games in particular?

[Bodhesatva]

I've been wondering just how much leverage a company's other endeavors give them when marketing their video game systems. Simple example: Sony has consistently gambled by selling their consoles at a significant loss, in the hopes that they will make up those losses later on -- I'm not sure that's something Nintendo could possibly do, even if they wanted to, because they don't have other sources of income to suppliment such a gamble.

Obviously, though, money goes only so far. I doubt many people here have been particularly concerned with the overall structure of companies like Sony and Microsoft that have other significant holdings besides video games: for those unaware, Microsoft's overall profts were over 13 billion last year, placing them in the top 10 most profitable companies in the world. Sony, while still an extremely succesfull company, had profits totalling around 1.5 billion -- about 1/10 of Microsoft's, and not enough to place them even in the top 100 companies in the world. Nintendo doesn't even register on the map: they're not in the top 500.

Link: http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/18/06f2000_The-Forbes-2000_Prof.html

In other words: Nintendo is a big fish, Sony is a very big fish, and Microsoft is a goliath. How do people here feel this effects the gaming industry, and how each company can afford to approach their system strategies? Sony and especially Microsoft are well known for gobbling up robust game developers for console exclusives.