NA is by no way Sony's primary money maker (as far as consoles are concerned).

Sony went into this battle with a clear loss beind them (X360 vs PS3 was 2:1 in NA). Nobody in their wildest dreams at Sony imagined they would be leading this time (Ps4 vs X1 1.1:1 in NA) and probably come out ahead. So right from the start they carefully calculated their plans with the idea of gaining traction in NA and avoid another 2:1 loss. I'm pretty sure they are still baffled they make so much more money in NA than foreseen.

The main money maker for Sony is outside NA. Just consider what happened in Europe (and Asia, too) this summer. around the time when Microsoft introduced the XBox Slim, they jacked up the PS4 prices back to full list price. While Microsoft came in with $249 AAA game bundles. The result was that MS actually sold more consoles that Sony for a while - while losing horrible amounts of money on hardware (MS got less than $200 for a box that costs over $300 to manufacture according to iSupply, while Sony raked in loads of cash).Onyl now during christmas time have both company reduced the price into the (unhealthy) $249 price range. If you want to one-up the argument, Sony is actually significantly reducing the losses by selling fewer PS4 than last year. So I doubt anyone at Sony is even slightly worried about current NA console sales numbers.

If you want some useful context, right here it was - one company losing bizarre amounts of money on hardware for months, while the other company makes hay (the iSupply estimate is debatably too high but the fact remains that roughly a third of the hardware revenue has been a loss for the MS camp for months now. As has been said before by others, these losses can be hidden by other stuff MS sells but I highly doubt again that upper managment is going to tolerate these losses forever).

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=222125&page=1

PlayStation is very important to Sony's survival. That brand covers more than just consoles nowadays. But again, PlayStation is thriving right now and completely obliterating the Xbox. Both the Xbox and Playstation brand will be fine but if it's worrying for Sony (your words) then Xbox is in a bad state right now. 

Again I think both brands will be ok but if you  think Playstation is going through worrying times, Xbox must be near death. Especially when Xbox relies on US for 60% of its sales, and most of those sales were through fire sales and still the Playstation is beating it for the year, previous years and lifetime. PlayStation only relies on US for 30% of its sales so you can see that being down ( while still selling very good)  isn't that concerning to the degree you're making out. 

I have been hearing this for way wat too long now.. and that was even during the Steve Balmer CEO days. MS now even have a hardcore shareholder centric supposedly xbox hater  CEO- Satya Nadella and even under his leadership we continue to see new variants and new releases of xbox one, into next year and 2018 in fact. Seriously, given the trend of the ongoing support (and who knows why) - if your arguement that it is a huge money hole is to be believed, - then by the time they do decide to ditch it, the whole concept of consoles will become irrelevent even for Sony (which is why MS are putting in place clever platform integration solutions in place for gaming- another story anyway). Again heard this for way too long - since the incredible RROD losses of the 360.  I am starting to not believe this argument at all now.  it is just way to convenient but never actually validated as the years pass by.

Talk about fanning the flames......

You realize that the money in the console business comes from selling games right? Na dthst as at the end of November Sony has sold over 50M consoles? Even with their "bad news" November and all and their generally collapsing business. 

Ah well, whateveer makes you feel better i guess. 

Honestly its not about what makes me feel good or whatever. I am trying to be as objective and as analytical as possible. I just think November results (from what has been established so far) may be the begining of a decline in consoles all together and that MS are in a stronger position to weather such a reduction in gaming/ console business - and Sony really should have had a better performance because of all the 3 said combined factors.  I am a little concerned about your statment about fanning the flames so to speak. that is not my intention.  It makes it sound like people's well being are at stake here.  Its only a topic forum for people to voice their opinions which is what I am doing. Its not so much about the past or even the present success - its about extrapolating into the future based on whatever developments/ info we have at hand.

I think you might be clutching at straws a little too early.

Even the NPD guy said, if you look at last years releases, and then this year, there is no comparrison, and I would agree. Not been excited by this years releases at all. Yeah I've bought them all and think its been an ok year, but it was no 2015, with a new Fallout etc. I think the biggest problem is that its been a bit of a boring year for releases and some supposed big hitters turned out disappointing, such as No mans Sky.

Next year looks like it could be the best year ever, what with Sony really hitting its stride and a new Red Dead Redemption hopefully, that will push hardware massively. I think things will look up next year. Thats how sales work with consoles sometimes, they need games to push the consoles. Lets wait and see if next year is bad before we rush to any conclusions.

Why I say you are fanning the flames is cause you arent only jumping the gun and being somewhst sensationalist, you are doing so while ignoring a lot of factors.

Games sell hardware, that has always been the case and will comtinue to be the case. Its why Japan so sony's best november so far. Its why NA is down now cause as many have pointed out to you, this november is nothing like last years on the software front. COD was literally down by almost 50%!!! And that game is biggest in NA.

Then you talk about a decline when sony clewlry pointer out they have had the best BF in playstation history, which clearly indicates that NA is not even their biggest market. And that they did very well everywhere else. 

And then you also have to consider that the biggest hitters of this gen are not even here yet, it really just seems like you are cherry picking information to suit your narrative. 

How can you say Sony is in trouble when by the end of this year they very well could have sold over 54M consoles? In three years? That's PS2/Wii level numbers right there!! 

And lastly, No company, including MS is structured to keep bleeding money. It's a business not a charity. That's why companies have divisions, if a division isn't doing well, they will cut it off eventually. Look at Apple with the iPod? you think Apple doesnt have the money to keep supporting the iPod if it wanted to? But it's tapering it off because it's become redundant. When the scorpio is released, if it doesn't turn things around for MS, believe me when I say that wouldn't bode well for the Xbox division. 

And domt forget, PlayStation isn't just consoles. We also have PSVue and PS+ which this gen is pulling in a lot of subscriptions. 

long and short of it is, it's not as bad as you make it sound and then there is a lot more to all of it than you are writing. You saying you are being objective just makes it worse cause you aremt looking at all the data. 

Yeh look I am basing my assessment on what happened in Nov. If proven true do you honestly really think that is not a bad situation to be in for Sony in the biggest amarket after a major pro relase/ launch aligned with psvr and price reduced slim all ariund the same time -  and again with one of their few profit making businesses. Are you honestly wanting to dicount this as a non event..Come on.. does this not ring alarm bells..And re MS bleeding money over xbox perpetually..again I have heard this way too long and and by the time they do decide to give it the chop (based on predicions like this I have heard since 2008), in all seriousness consoles may be a thing of the past.. This prediction currently stands prepetually unproven even after 10 years . If a genuine decline in the console market is being experience then of course MS are in the better position to weather the storm until they transition into the next phase of pc/ device/ service gaming integration.  BTW Sony have not done any homework in this space in part due to their exit from pc and devices.  Remember MS are the ones here with the dosh to commit into the future here and as said before even with the most conservative shareholder centric CEO appointed 3 years ago, they commited to at least another 2 years of xbox development. That is a fact.  Lets see if December bodes well for your argument.

So $4.7bn profit for Surface and Cloud in one quarter is now considered a flop?

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/microsoft-surface-profit-quarter-2016