but you forget that they already knew they will loose money in short term by putting blu ray drive in PS3,,,,but their  strategy was to win the next physical format war,,,,which they achieved by the way,,,so they planned this loss for a much bigger gain for SONY 3 years down the road with blu ray roalties.

http://www.forbes.com/2008/05/14/sony-quarterly-loss-markets-equity-cx_vk_0514markets03.html?partner=yahootix

good read. I posted in another thread and didn't realize this was already here. There are lots of things to read "between the lines" when it comes to financial reports.

Ouch sony has some big losses

you mean sony or gaming devision?casue Sony had the second best year in their history.(5 times higher than the year before).

Yeah, their forecasts have traditionally been overly optimistic - guess they got called on it, financial reports aren't PR pieces.

Anyways, a 10M forecast suggests they don't plan to drop the price. Let's see how it works for them, so far what we've seen this generation is that the demand for expensive consoles isn't gonna increase no matter the HD bells & whistles.

Finally, here's a bow to the team that created and managed the PS2. It'll go down in the annals of history as one of the most succesful ventures in the industry as far as platforms goes.

If you read that fortune article I posted, there is a bit more "between the lines" information dissected for the inquiring mind... For this most recent year (and some in this most recent quarter), they had a roughly $150 million "gift" from the reversal of a charge taken previously. That's a one-time event. They also got a one-time shot in the arm from a roughly $800 million windfall from selling off the semiconductor manufacturing line. There were some other sales as well but I don't have the time to dig them up. There was an insurance division, I believe, they sold off as well. I don't recall the number but it was big. Take those two things out and it's not really that impressive. Add to that their pessimistic view on the next fiscal year:

"For the year ahead, Sony predicted its net income would decline 22%, to 290.0 billion yen ($2.8 billion), because of the absence of the extraordinary gain recorded in the year recently concluded."

Clearly, Sony has some work to do and the weak dollar is going to continue to significantly hamper profits as the U.S. is a BIG customer....

All that said, the market certainly liked what they saw as the stock jumped up a good bit yesterday -- about $4 bucks a share which was a significant move. It's holding around yesterdays close so that's a good sign at least from investor sentiment.