"We do not plan to announce additional restructuring measures at this time," said Sony spokesman Atsuo Omagari. "We don't have any such plan."

This is an empty denial like when they deny price cuts. It's the only thing they can say.

Some restructuring will have to happen unless they want to run out of cash. They have around $7 billion which doesn't last forever under forex losses and electronics sales severely down.

They have no choice but to deny and say everything is ok.  They do not want investors and shareholders to lose even more faith and be angrier.  Basically a putting on a front.

Edited.  Take a look at the remark they made.  basically denying and not denying at the same time.

They already "promoted" him... to a special new really important job out in the parking lot.  It's a classic corporate maneuver to get rid of people that are losing you money, but without telling the world "this guy ruined everything, we're all doomed, we're firing him!"

@neotea: True. When they say "we don't have any such plan" again, it can make it look like they're saying "we don't have any plan for restructuring", but it actually is "we don't have any plan for announcing".

I wonder if there's a subject in the PR course to teach this, or do they pick it up naturally?

Yeah its a nice PR spin they did its a good  way of denying and yet not denying at the same time.

sony built the ps3 with about a 10 year life cycle in mind.

The console has been out for 2 years and is about to start making profits on each console sold.

Sony is not worried about what is happening with the ps3 at this point in its life and the gaming division at sony is certainly not the reason for the hirings or firings going on there. all you people think as if business is done day by day, these consoles are investments. sony's goal with their investment like any corporation is to have a positive net present value when its all said and done. With the ps3 breaking even soon and 8 years to go in its life it will most certainly have a positive NPV, thus is a successful investment, thus this topic is stupid and has nothing to do with the Playstation 3

I would sell short ^_^

Throwing in acronyms if you don't have a clue what you're talking about makes you look dumb.

NPV's are used for investment decisions. Obviously the PS3 project had a positive NPV at the time the decision to make it was made. Maybe they used a 10 year lifespan in their calculations and they probably based it on some 100 million units sold in that timespan.

Whatever they though is totally irrelevant now. You basically have everything wrong you can have wrong in a single post:

SCE has been making a loss for the past 2 FY's and is very likely to make a loss this FY. My guess is that the PS2 and PSP are profitable, hence the PS3 must be VERY unprofitable. Whether that's manufacturing costs alone, or also the higher development costs is irrelevant.

Ehm....that's why the fired the CEO of the Division?

Ehm, SCE is the most underperforming division BY FAR. It's the only division presenting a loss last year.

When all is said and done you don't have a NPV, you have a balance sheet that's positive or negative. In this case probably very negative. I guess you missed the news that the PS3 has managed to evaporate ALL profits from the PS2 era...

A lot of the confusion is apparently being caused by a state of near open warfare between British born CEO Sir Howard Stringer and an entreanched beuracracy in Japan.

The stockholders are apparently demanding that he take charge and make deep radical cuts with everything on the table. Japan executives claim that they are planning no more cuts than already announced.

Ken Kutaragi, the so-called "Father of the PlayStation was an early casualty of this conflict when he was canned by Stringer for essentially ignoring him on making cost saving measures on the PS3.

To maintain any stockholder confidence, Stringer is going to have to do something dramatic and the very high profile of the PS3 as a money drain makes it a likely target, The question is whether the machine gets the axe or it's pricetag gets axed in order to boost sales. The least useful and perhaps likely strategy is to do nothing, A possible alternative would be to axe the PSP. To keep two non-profitable platforms could lead to a complete stock collapse.

The answer will probably be announced after CES.

"The most important thing is that, to improve organizational strength in the areas of development, purchasing and marketing, it will be necessary to further concentrate power in the hands of [Sir Howard] and unless this is achieved we believe [Sony] will be unable to close the gap with competitors such as Apple and Nintendo."

Strange they mention Apple and Nintendo by name...but not MS?

Apple making a home console confirmed?

Anyway, back on topic, We'll just have to wat till the Sony q3 results and statements on 29 Jan to find out the truth.

Also, for Sony gaming division to pull back from -$1.5 billion to just -$500mil in a mere 2 quarters isn't that bad, is it? still got another 4 months to pull back to the black.