Which Company Will Be The Next To Leave The Gaming Industry...

[Alby_da_Wolf]

PS3 became profitable also on HW during Spring 2010. It has accumulated huge losses up until then, but from then on, stopping selling would just leave them unchanged (actually growing due to interests) while keeping on selling, but finally profiting, would help reducing those losses. But the Business Segment including Games (that includes in its turn PS3), PCs, LCDs and compact digital cameras is suffering heavy losses due to LCDs, while the profiting products now profit less due to several negative factors, unfavourable exchange rates, price cuts and damages and plants halted due to the tsunami. If in desperate need of money, Sony could sell some profiting product categories, like Games, but if it were enough, it could be better to just cut the losing products like LCDs. Currently Sony partially did the latter, selling many LCD production plants to Samsung and partially getting in supplies of LCD panels it needs for its monitors and TVs from 3rd parties at costs lower than producing them itself.
I doubt that if forced to cede a profitable product, Games could be the first choice, as Sony enjoys many beneficial synergies between them and many of its other products, like Music and Pictures, and, less directly, many others. OTOH, TVs too enjoy synergies with other products, like Home Audio and Video, Digital Cameras and others, moreover Games, TVs and all the products with a large public help to keep the Sony brand strong, so at the moment, just ceding LCD plants that produce panels too expensive for the new lower prices of TVs and monitors, is the only sensible move, unless forced to something more drastic and painful. I don't know why Samsung found those plants attractive and bought them, most probably it needs new plants and not having to invest creating them is already a saving for it, while having them already running is another advantage, most probably new contracts will mean lower wages than what Sony paid and finally Samsung balance sheets and homeland market and workforce don't use Yens, so that harmful factor ceases existing for it.