I thought it was a typo at first read. I don't see why they don't just pay it at this point.

Even the most profitable companies take up loans, because sometimes you need short term cash to cover expenses, and it makes no sense to take that cash from your main reserves. This is the same reason the country I live in (Norway) can run a surplus on its federal budget, but still takes up loans to cover costs. It's not as simple as a "They have enough money to pay it, so why don't they."

Also corporate bonds don't work like that. It's not like you can pay it whenever you want. They have due dates and set interest payments for years.

Which is why I have said several times that absolute value is more important in the case of disaster - that is one my main points.  Having the best Ratios is nice for investor meetings, but when the shit hits the fan what matters is how long can you survive hardship while you steer your company back on course.  Sony's (Too?) massive size allowed them to sell off nearly endless pieces of their business when some of their divisions were going through hard times.   If Nintendo were to be hit anywhere near as hard they would go bankrupt very quickly.

Before the Crash,  Sony, were  much bigger than Microsoft, now they are backing up, SCE, became SIE, to show that they will invest more on Playstation.

Government debt is a little more complicated... A lot of the reserve is used to manipulate the market in some way and play with exchange rates, and serve as cushion. So they can't dispose of that money and need external money. Other times like in Brazil they take money from banks with like 14% interest and lend subsized to "improve industries" and that money is lent by the same bank by 4% interest rate, and basically the bank is making 10% profit with a money it doesn't even own.

On company side, you could see on simpler term that a investiment have 25% return rate while the lent money will cost 10% on that period, so it's better to own money because it'll generate profit to cover the cost of it... That is why MS even having much more cash than Ninty still pick a lot of loans on the market... Ninty is probably too risk adverse and preffer to sit on their cash and invest very little and lend even less.

They were true Juggernauts before LG and Samsung started flourishing and Apple put iPod in the market.

I'm not messing with you. The fact that I bothered to do the math to support my statements will attest to that.

Sony has more employees than Nintendo. If we divide "armor" by employee size, we get the following:

Nintendo:

$17.4 billion / 5,000 = $3,480,000 per employee

Sony:

$22.1 billion / 130,000 = $170,000 per employee

What do you make of this? Who do you think might be able to hold onto their workforce for longer during times of crisis?

I certainly know who I'd rather work for.

Sony, is making profit once again, the Tides have changed, and thanks for their assets they are still alive, Mobile Division, lost 10 times less money on 2015, than on 2014, Video game profits and image sensor profits raised previous year, Predictions of Loss, became Profit, and hundreds of millions of Profit, PS4, will be the Market leader for all this generation, and Xbox One, will not even sell half of what Playstation 4, will.

Now, we will wait and see Nintendo NX, to see if Nintendo, will turn the things up, if you are arguing with Logic, and without Feelings, so you need to look to where those companies are headed for, we also have the "????????????" Factor, that the Playstation VR, can raise PS4 Sales, just like Motion Control, did for the Wii.

Sony, already had a lot of loss in the past years, and now is back up, Nintendo, cannot loss Money, other wise they would be in big trouble.

Sony is also more than a gaming company just as Microsof.

Around the 90's before the JP crash, back when MS was still in it's infancy and before America decided to swallow the world economy... 

Do you have some links for this numbers!?