tbone51 said:
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Nintendo made an operating loss (which means that as a business their costs were higher than their revenue and excludes things like tax and interest earned/spent) but a net income (with is the final, post tax, post interest revenue minus cost).
Sony on the other hand made an operating profit but a net loss, when happens when your operating profit isn't enough to cover your tax burden. That can happen when tax incurred in previous quarters is deferred resulting in a tax bill disproportionate to the operating income for the current quarter (that can happen due to differences in tax laws both within and between countries that affect when the tax liability is realised) .
Long story short, from an operational perspective, Sony was profitable (just) and Nintendo was not this quarter. However, once the final numbers are crunched for this quarter, the overall (net) result is that Sony lost money, but Nintendo gained. This means that over the quarter Nintendo grew and Sony shrank. While that looks great for Nintendo, from a longer term assessment of how a company is going the operating income is a better measure, because in the long term the tax burden balances out between quarters. This leaves the operating income as the main measure that a company is making more revenue than it cost to produce, which means in the longer term (if operating profit is sustained) then the company will grow.
