^ SonyBMG was for a different reason: they bought the last part of BMG, which wasn't yet theirs.

I missed the smallprint it seems - I was under the impression that Sony BMG merger hadn't been reflected yet in that statement for some reason

"Sony periodically reviews the presentation of its financial information to ensure that it is consistent with the way management views its consolidated operations. Since Sony considers
Sony Ericsson, S-LCD and SONY BMG (which together constitute a majority of Sony’s equity investments) to be integral to Sony’s operations, Sony determined the most appropriate
method to report equity in net income or loss of all affiliated companies was as a component of operating income, effective from Q1 FY08. In connection with this reclassification,
operating income and income before income taxes for all prior periods have been reclassified."

Also my point about growth in the gaming segment still stands (for now)

roll on 29 Jan...

BMG didn't lose more than the gaming division:

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/viewer/08q2/slide/11_slide.html

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/viewer/08q2/slide/15_slide.html

The gaming division lost 39.5 billion yen or more than $400 million.

BMG lost $45 million (note that this one is not reported in yen).

It seems I missed a zero or two in my calcs

bit still, Sony Pictures and the gaming division were the only ones to show growth

it's not safe from layoffs and cutbacks but it's certainly safe from being discontinued.  Most of the losses have already been taken, starting today until the ps3 dies it will make a profit though so it doesn't make sense to kill it off now.

45% Opinion-65% Sure
The PS3 may become nominally profitable but I doubt that it will ever begin to make up the lost ground and it will not last ten years or lead directly to its successor because I think the cell architecture, while a brilliant solution to get that kind of performance today is technologically a dead end. Ultimately the games created for it will likely not be BC on the PS4 nor will the tools and programming skills for it transfer forward. This will have to affect its attractiveness to 3rd party developers.

Fact

The danger of trying to leap too far ahead of mainstream technology too soon is that when the mainstream catches up - you're dead. I'll use an example that I am intimately familiar with. Up until fairly recently, the only way to get a high resolution digital microscope camera to operate at full resolution (1024x1024 and up) at full video rate (30fps) so that you didn't have visible lag was to use special one-off proprietary cards and wide parallel bandwidth cables. These systems worked well eliminating the lag (slow refresh) that otherwise made viewing unpleasant and focusing difficult. The downside was that they were very expensive, not easily portable because of the board, and because these specialized PCI cards were by small manufacturers, compatibility issues were not infrequent, special drivers were required that restricted your choice of OS, and only software especially designed to recognize them could be used, except with a slow and clumsy TWAIN interface.

Be that as it may, they were the cat's pajamas, the instrument you had to have regardless of price right up to the exact moment when the first CMOS/IEEE1394 (standard Firewire) and soon thereafter USB2 cameras came out. They did the exact same job but cost about 20%-40% as much, used a standard interface, often required no driver and could be moved freely from computer to computer. At that moment the sales of the proprietary cameras went to 0%, support went to 0, and you could hear the sound of $10,000 cameras hitting trash cans. Instant orphaned technology.

40% Speculation- 60% Sure

I don't know the exact time but it'll be a lot less than 10 years. I don't know the exact form, Fusion, NVIDIA, INTEL, or Open GL but essentially everyone is working on the GPU based parallel processing computer. They exist now but not yet in a form or at a price for video gaming. Some people are not sure if they can ever completely replace the general purpose CPU for non-parallel computing functions, math, word processing etc but there is no question that it is the future of graphic intensive massively parallel processing. Game consoles would be an almost ideal application.

In much less than the 10 years that some think the PS3 will be leading edge, it will in fact be vastly outperformed by an inexpensive standard GPU processor than can be programmed like a standard PC, meaning essentially, no more ports, no more multiple versions, and competition between platform will be strictly on the basis of exclusive IPs and GAMER INTERFACE. Since video standards will only go up at very infrequent intervals, these consoles could have extremely long lives with software and firmware upgrades.

100% pure Speculation

Obviously hacking and pirating could be a problem but not necessarily an insolvable one. Games could, with memory being so inexpensive be in the form a high speed cartridge, perhaps a solid cast one to defeat disassembly or even now that most consoles are internet ready, online activation.  Otherwise software and hardware could become separate entities like games for windows, where it doesn't matter what you play them on.

This solution would probably fit MS fine but I'm not sure that Nintendo would be willing. I'd love a dual system though where Nintendo first person came on a cartridge but you could also play all the other titles. That would seem to screw Microsoft but if they stuck to traditional controls and Nintendo went totally motion, the separation would probably be about what it is today. What about Sony. If they stuck with the PS3 for ten years, they probably be a tiny niche. If they jumped into the fray, they could possibly be the casual-hardcore bridge machine with a dual control system.

When will a great commodity priced GPU HD processor be ready to go? Beats me, but if I knew when Nintendo was planning the Wii2, and probably if I knew the date that MS planned the 720, I think I'd have the answer because I think this is why they took the routes that they did. 

Those were the words of an analyst, not of Sony.

I'm thinking now if they will even still go by their mantra of a 10-year plan. This may not be in the cards after the new changes occur.

I learned that at my bizness, madskillz.com It was featured in a New York Times article about MP3 repair - and blew my biz up like nitro. So, I do understand a wii bit about business - bidness - bizness and even got props from a guy who worked on 5 tech startups and is currently my biz consultant.

Just sayin'

@ Grampy

What? Why would Sony axe the PSP? It is a profitable platform along with the PS2. They make money off of each one sold and the software it sells.