Pretty good chance for that. And as TWRoO stated, if they actually combined their line withe the Vaio brand then the chances are pretty high for them to post a profit. If I recall correctly the Vaio segemnt always had a pretty decent profit margin, tough somebody could look more into it

Well the case for Sony is that they've lost so much money that small profit isn't going to help them, they need to have a considerable amount of profit on the next 2-3 years to actually make the release of the PS3 worthwhile.

Same case for Microsoft and the 360, but losses on the PS3 were much bigger than the 360 if I'm not mistaken...

hunter_alien said: If I recall correctly the Vaio segemnt always had a pretty decent profit margin, tough somebody could look more into it

You recall incorrectly. Sony took a huge hit in its Vaio segment (when the segment was incorporated into the Gaming division) since they had to write off a large chunk of money. All their Vaio laptops, being $200-$500 more expensive than comparable competitor products, were dead paper weights in shops (at least in Europe). If those write-offs were  a one-time action, Sony will report some profit for last quarter.

Nintendo: Yep, but everyone knows that.

Microsoft: Yes. There's been no system price drop, and it is known that the Elite sells at a profit. (The Arcade is speculated to be near cost.) Adding in the games, accessories, and Live should easily offset R&D costs on Natal for the quarter.

Sony: Near zero. I don't mean 0 as in definitely lose, but I don't see much ink in general, be it black or red. (Say,

Yes except maybe Sony but I think they will have some profit. Xbox outsell the Wii couple times in the last few months.

Nintendo will.
Microsoft has in the recent past, but I'm not sure if further Natal development and some next gen R&D will be apparent at this time in their financials.
Sony...well the PS3 has had one of the best software quarters in its history, so if it doesn't post a considerable profit ($50m+) then I would be pretty shocked. PSP & PS2 dwindling doesn't help, but the PS2 did have a strong February.

^ I don't think the natal's developpement will make their finances suffer, it will to some extent but not that much.

Yea, I think they will profit Those reasons I listed are the only ways they could possibly not.

I think by this time next year, or at least by the end of the gen MS will be in the black as far as the X360 business goes (at least assuming there were not a lot of hidden profits from whatever other products that have swum in and out of the ED Division)

In terms of the PS3 alone though Sony will never recover the losses, this coming quarter may help show that it is not losing money anymore, but it is easily over $8 billion in the red by now so it doesn't mean squat.

That may be true, I guess it will depend on how much money Sony will receiving from Blu-Ray royalties, since the PS3 was the deciding factor that made Blu-Ray win the HD format war. If those royalties end up being a huge load of money then the PS3 release would have been worthwhile...