But Sony IS making money on Blu Ray (So is Microsoft, they did win the codec afterall), on TVs and HD equipment and on tons of other things the Playstation brand helps drive.  Sony is an electronics manufacturer so taking a loss on the PS3 to make a big gain in other areas (format war, HD adoption ect) is very different then Microsofts position.  Microsoft doesn't really make anything except for bad software for PCs.  They don't sell TVs, they don't sell recievers, they don't sell speakers.  They only thing they do sell is theZune and the 360.  Microsoft is not making that 6 billion up in other areas, they have no real gain here in the short or even the medium term.  Unless the Windows thing turns itself around with Vista/Windows 7 doing better eventually they will be forced to pull the plug on the video game division. Sony isn't the #1 seller of LCD tvs anymore, so another company is getting more from their efforts. The Windows stuff is just speculation so i'll leave it as such.

   If you want to know the real reason MS is making a console its pretty simple.  Friday I browsed the internet on my iphone and found a map to take me where I needed to go.  I looked up movie reviews and show times, bought tickets over my iphone and went.  Then I got home and streamed movies from a network hard drive to my PS3 and bought a few episodes of Rescue me (great show) on my PS3 to watch.  I did a ton of things that 5 years ago would have been done on a PC and didn't have to boot up a PC once to do them. Yay, you've entered the digital millenium!

   Eventually noone will need windows since they'll have iphone type mobile devices, consoles (not necesarily video game consoles, could be stuff like the Apple TV too) with enhanced capabilities connected to the TV and internet browser based web aplications with ever increasing functionality.  All of those things Microsoft would currently have to compete with (and they tend to fail at doing that in making multimedia devices or mobile operating systems, in making web applications and search engines, everything outside office and windows has been a complete 3rd place or worse failure).  So what they are trying to do is leverage the monopoly money into other areas to knock competitors out while they have the money advantage so they can monopolize the new tech frontiers too and feed us more of the same Windows/IE/office crap at hyper inflated prices.  Ever bought a retail legit version of Vista?  It was 400 dollars or more at release.  That is cheap for Office which can get near 1000 dollars if you buy the whole set.  Microsoft doesn't just develop monopolies, they develop then exploit them with the most extreme price gouging of any company I can think of. So um what do people do when they turn on their computers if they don't have an operating system? Btw the prices you're quoting are business prices for Office, you or I could get office far cheaper than any business could. I.E is free IIRC and that Vista stuff is so you can migrate it from one PC to another. OEM prices are far lower. They aren't a complete failure you know, their Silverlight/Moonlight software looks like its in prime position to replace Java and it comes in an open source version.

   The 360 is only one front in the global war to monopolize outside the PC OS/office market but here's hoping the failure continues.  I can't immagine the horror of a Windows Vista quality....everything. You mean, pretty good quality right? Vista actually isn't all that bad.