I'm pretty sure GTAIV cost around $100 million to develop, and even with its relative success, Take2 still tanked badly.

What games do these studios make? Sony's NBA franchise. What else?

Bend = Syphon Filter/Resistance Retribution (PSP games tanked, relatively, hopefully Retribution does better).

BigBig = Pursuit force (tanked)

San Diego = NBA and MLB.  So 1/2 of the team sucks.

Yes every game out of these studios has failed (sales wise) except for the MLB: The Show series which has been successful.

 I'm not saying they are, but I was comparing the market conditions they have exposure to abroad and Sony Financial Holdings does represent a significant portion of their company with about 40% of assets.  And yeah Japanese financial companies obviously were much more conservative in their investments with them helping to backstop Morgan Stanley and

Merrill Lynch but the Japanese goverment in December did say they were prepared to bailout 110 billion in bad loans and derivatives so they are not immune to what is happening globally.  Now i don't know what Sony had invested in for their policy holders but with that article I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say they were pretty conservative.

I believe down sizing is in order but really it won't just be SCE but the company as a whole. The new CEO (or president w/e) want's to do a little house cleaning and get some of the people not doing so much for the company out of there, mostly the Japanese folks that have grandfathered themselves into the company, get fat checks, and a lot of pull, cause they're making choices that are now hurting the company.

I think SCE is here to stay though I think if they have another gen like this one they might stop the console race, if nothing else many of SCE's studios will survive even if they're cut from the SCE payroll as they make quality games and it would be pretty cool to see some of these guys make things on other consoles if it came to that.

Not another of these stupid.....OH a POLL! yay!

*updated* so many people said "business as usual for Sony"  hm.  Don't they know that Sony is planning on downsizing in the next few months?

Fully one half of the voters think that nothing is going to happen to SCE.

This seems to me very unrealistic.

precisely. it's almost as if extreme Sony fans really are living in their own world?  Do they really think that all this negative talk is purely out of jealousy?  Can they not even admit to some piece of reality?  Not saying that SCE is cut back, but just other nonprofitable departments like Erikson, etc is even too much of a deviation from the world they understand.  They must not have heard the news that Sony is going to cut back.  That must be it.

Sony fans never really listen... I mean there's still many out there that believe the Gamecube is weaker then the PS2... they kinda put on blinders and go through the world spouting w/e they want to, though the general group that is Sony fans came in at a time when the market was expanding past the knowledgeable nerds that know about specs, game mechanics, etc.  This was the time the now "key" demographic came in, the teen to 28 year old males, joined the gaming community and most of these people are you guessed it ignorant to the world except for the things they back, be it cars, video games, electronics, etc. and usually they back one brand or company with blind faith.  And many of this group joined up when Sony had some of the best marketing in gaming, so guess which company they like and still get behind today?  These guys are also the ones that "hate teh casuals who know nothing of games" when it was once they who were blind and ignorant to games and people like me the Atari, NES, SNES, GEN gamer hated them being so ignorant... funny how this all goes in a cycle isn't it?