The goal of this thread is to have a leaderboard of annual operating incomes across the board to show who has had some of the best and worst years, financially, in the history of gaming. I will include operating income data from every year obtainable for any gaming company. My goal is to include all independent gaming companies, as time permits me. It is difficult, so hopefully, you are patient (if you desire this sort of data at all, like I do).

Why is it difficult? The data is scattered all over the place, some data may not be locatable anymore for some companies (especially if the company went out of business a long time ago). Some of the data is in Yen, so I have to convert it to dollars, then adjust it for inflation. The operating income of games for some companies is merged with other divisions, making it even harder to get precise information.

I will be updating as time permits, especially if enough are interrested in this sort of data. I prefer to look at actual dollars to see which gaming companies are dominating, rather than software/hardware sales figures, because those figures aren't all sold at the same level of profit as other companies.Anyway, here is data I've gathered so far:

*All Numbers adjusted to 2000 inflation levels for future proofing.

*Massive thanks to @liquidninja for getting this going back in 2009 and the data collected https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread/57802/profit-numbers-nintendo-sony-game-segment-and-microsoft-edd-segment/1/

Left to Right: Operating Incomes 1981 - Present

Collective Operating Income Per Company

I will bump and update thread title as I finish data sets off.

Good thread op!

Looking at this data, Nintendo Switch will eventually become more profitable than Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii combined. 

And they say Nintendo only having one platform would make them less profitable.

This is solid stuff.
Just curious, are you planning to add software developers over time or just stick to the gaming divisions of the big three?

Whoops made an error - ignore post

Everyone. The goal is to add everyone. It's going to take a LOOOONG time to get this done lol. I'm going to attempt big third party ones next, but eventually I'll want to add smaller ones, or ones that died off years ago, but like I said some of that data may be lost in the internet somewhere lol.

I'm hoping I can find good data on Nintendo pre-2005 so I can finish them off.

Microsoft's data may be the most difficult of all to go through. Here's what their 2020 information looks like:

More Personal Computing

Revenue increased $2.6 billion or 6%.

• Windows revenue increased $1.9 billion or 9%, driven by growth in Windows Commercial and Windows OEM. Windows Commercial products and cloud services revenue increased 18%, driven by increased demand for Microsoft 365. Windows OEM revenue increased 9%, ahead of PC market growth. Windows OEM Pro revenue grew 11%, driven by Windows 7 end of support and healthy Windows 10 demand, offset in part by weakness in small and medium businesses. Windows OEM non-Pro revenue grew 5%, driven by consumer demand from remote work and learn scenarios.

• Surface revenue increased $457 million or 8%, driven by increased demand from remote work and learn scenarios.

• Gaming revenue increased $189 million or 2%, driven by an increase in Xbox content and services, offset in part by a decrease in Xbox hardware. Xbox content and services revenue increased $943 million or 11% on a strong prior year comparable, driven by growth in Minecraft, third-party titles, and subscriptions, accelerated by higher engagement during stay-at-home guidelines. Xbox hardware revenue declined 31%, primarily due to a decrease in volume and price of consoles sold.

• Search advertising revenue increased $112 million or 1%. Search advertising revenue, excluding traffic acquisition costs, was relatively unchanged.

Operating income increased $3.1 billion or 24%.

• Gross margin increased $3.0 billion or 12%, driven by growth in Windows, Gaming, and Surface. Gross margin percentage increased, due to sales mix shift to higher margin businesses and gross margin percentage improvement in Gaming.

• Operating expenses decreased $119 million or 1%, driven by the redeployment of engineering resources, offset in part by charges associated with the closing of our Microsoft Store physical locations and investments in Gaming.

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They split up based on revenue but merged on operating income lol. 

Someone did this a while back: https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=57802

Some of the source links might not be valid anymore though and I don't want to delve through it myself but if you are up to it.

Nintendo's IR site goes back to at least 2002 https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/library/annual/index.html?page=1
Or Earnings releases back to 1999/2000: https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/library/earnings/index.html?year=1999
But they also keep handy spreadsheets going back to 1981: https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/historical_data/index.html

Sony going back to 1998: https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/library/presen/er/archive.html

This will be hugely helpful! I plan on having a more comprehensive collection with other companies, not just a few, and I will need to adjust those figures for 2000 inflation levels to make it standardized for comparison, but thank you for providing those links!