So what? MS already took the hit on their Entertainment division, knowing that the money would last much longer than one year.

Think of it this way: A console gets produced on March 1st. It gets sold to retailer (meaning MS gets their money) on April 1st. The cost was in a previous quarter but the profit was in the next quarter.

Is that profit "fake" somehow? No, the money was put aside or spent with the expectation that the sale would happen down the line. Overall, at the end of the console's lifetime, you add it all up and see whether there was true profit on the unit or not. You don't just call it fake or try to count that loss or profit twice.

Edit: I see you added to your post. No, that's not the reason MS did it. MS did it so they could take a huge loss on something right at the end of the fiscal year to write off the division for huge losses in one year. They probably had a reason for it. They may have had a bumper year in other divisions and wanted some tax breaks.

Of course, looking good for investors never hurts but I guarantee that wasn't the main reason for taking a massive loss like that in one year. 

As far as Sony goes, like MS it's a bit tricky to analyze since they only report operating income for their divisions. It's easier to sweep costs under the rug when all you show is operating income.

That doesn't even make any sense, RocketPig, and you know it. On the face of it, one could point out that the unit they get the money for on April first will go towards units they produce and ship in June, but do not get the money for until July. The point is, they have 3 months worth of produced, shipped and sold consoles, and they're counting three months of sold consoles.

But what they're doing with the repair-cost chargeback is saying, "We have these ongoing costs that we shouldn't have, so we want to show our investors that without those unforseen costs, we'd be making tiny profits."

The costs were foreseen, though.  MS knew they were shipping out bad hardware.  They just didn't care enough to delay it and fix it.

Do you have a link for that statement? rrod has been a non issue for a while though yes you will still have older ones break like some guy posted recently he had a 2 year old 360.  MS went on record saying they messed up but that they resolved their issues and that was months ago.  Seriously do you have numbers?links? or anything to backup that statement besides pulling it out of your butt? Yes some 360's may break but it should be more in the 3-5% acceptable rate now then it was before.  Stop beating a dead horse unless you can come up with solid evidence that it is is still an issue.

Well, all I'm saying is that this is Microsoft. One way or another, they are trying to trick us into believing they performed better than they actually did.

I do. Look at the something awful forums "my xbox broked" thread and you'll see a lot of people still reporting failures from falcon consoles.  Right around Christmas time, several people reported that they got forza/marvel bundled consoles that were broken out of the box.  Further, the failure rate for refurbished consoles from Microsoft is insane -- people there report that their console broke, then they're sending it to MS, and they provide a timeline. If their refurb brakes on short order or is broken out of the box, they report that as well. The numbers are absolutely insane, and this is in a very pro-xbox forum.  Yesterday, a local guy was selling his Falcon refurb on Craigslist because he replaced it with a DVD player.  He barely played it, but his falcon (which he got as a Christmas present) got an RROD.

I don't have great satistics, and neither do you.  MS is the only company with great statistics, and all they've been telling us is that the RROD isn't a problem and that the failure rate for the 360 is not out of the ordinary.  Until, of course, they had to announce the 3 year RROD program.

And again, I seriously doubt MS took a profit hit like that for investors. That's a silly notion. It was for the taxes. 

How many times do people want them to count the billion set aside for repairs. You people must not understand how these reports work.

LOL you serious?  This is reported to inverstors and their shareholders so why would they lie unless they want to get sued later on if they are caught misleading the market.  Is not like they kept it secret the billions they had been losing in the past LOL.

I won't argue MSs profit

But 3-5% failure rate, I definitely would argue.  

Link?