I would have said yes before i read this, now it's no.

This can be fake. Sony did good buisness with computer's T.V'S and PS3's.

No.

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/info/presen/20110523.html

Sony gives us the best exclusives free online and get punished for that...poor Sony :-/

The revised forecast is from Sony Corporation... not Sony Game Division.

Just a few days of earthquacke costed to Sony $270 million.

am i correct in saying:

sony incurred loses over the past few years due to the economic climate and such. it therefore used deferred tax assets to offset taxes for 7 years - making their recent statements look better. because of this earthquake and its real costs, sony will be making a 3rd consecutive loss, and so under official rule they have to essentially write down the offset taxes as a loss.

The OP and some of the article authors should take note of some of our posters, hats off to those who noted the differred tax situation.

http://accounting-financial-tax.com/2009/08/deferred-tax-asset-and-its-valuation-allowance-with-case-examples/

Sony's fine :)

Here is a better article

"The immediate cause was a Y360bn one-time tax charge, as Sony wrote-off deferred tax credits it had banked during the past two years of deficits. The credits have value only if Sony is confident it can earn taxable profits in Japan in the future – but it said that confidence had been eroded by the disaster."

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/bf4fd94a-8506-11e0-871e-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=rss#axzz1NBEGhjGZ

but sony still owes the government Y360bn in taxes for the period ending 5 years from now? 

so, if it doesn't return to profit in the next couple of years, this could be quite harmful.

am i correct? this dta stuff is frying my head

I was gonna ask why Sony is losing such a large sum this year but I forgot about the Japanese quake and stuff.

Still sucks they are gonna lose so much...i'm assuming this is all of Sony not just the Playstation branch.

lol don't worry. I'm an Accounting student just entering his Intermediate series and this stuff still confuse the *&%^ out of me. I'm gonna do my best to answer here and if Im mistaken I would be more than happy if someone can point it out

In essense I think you are right, it all comes down to their future performance as well. They posted 2 successive years of losses so by GAAP (actually wonder if Japan uses GAAP or IFRS) they HAVE to put this tax expense in their books by law if I'm not mistaken. Overall the bottom line is, it's not as bad as it may sound initially. Also I think sony have a positive on their operating income which is important, that's the foundation. They will be fine unless some extraordinary losses like tsunami happens again.

actually wonder if the tsunami costs can be considered as extraordinary costs. It depends on whether the area affected by it has a history of such tsunamis or not.

at the end of all this jibber jabber the bottom line is sony isn't doing great, but they aren't that bad off either. Here is a nice post I found on GAF with some extra details

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=28003272&postcount=109

and also LOL at those articles in which 'analysts' claimed PSN issue will cost sony Billions (2Bn iirc)