http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/technology/companies/23soft.html?_r=1&ref=business

"Thursday morning that it will lay off up to 5,000 people over the next 18 months"

"For its second quarter, Microsoft posted net income of $4.17 billion – a figure 11 percent lower the $4.71 billion reported in the comparable period last year."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/technology/23sony.html?ref=business

Sony's loss is $2.9 billion and not $1.9 billion for fiscal 2009 as this site reports, or it could be some economics vocab which i dont understand.

"The company projects an operating loss of 260 billion yen, about $2.9 billion, for the current business year, compared with a profit of 475.3 billion yen a year earlier."

Tough times for microsoft and tougher for sony:(, damn nintendo! lol

Sony the company lost $2.9BILLION in the last year. The gaming division (SCE) lost $1.7BILLION, meaning Sony gaming division ammounted to over 50% of the Companies losses. So i think this website reported just the games sector loses not the overall loses.

Either way it is a record loss

@Hyruken: No, that's wrong. We don't know yet what the gaming divison's losses will be.

What we do know is, for Sony as a whole:

Operating income forecast = -2.9 billion US dollars
Net income forecast = -1.7 billion US dollars

thanx for the explaination:), i hope both MS and Sony do well.

oh, well any one know the difference between the two? not the just the obvious gap of 1.2 billion?

 ah i see, the way the news piece on here worded it they mention just SCE, think that needs to be removed so everyone knows it is the whole company. Cheers for correcting!

Net income is Operating Income + Non-Operating Income - Income Taxes.

Taxes are probably negative in this case due to write-downs of inventory, so Sony gets a tax refund. Don't quote me on this part though as I'm not sure.

It says "Sony Forecasts $1.7 Billion Loss For Fiscal Year 2008, SCE to restructure"! ;)

I think it's pretty clear this way, but if you think there's a better way to phrase it please suggest :)

From the site http://financial-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Operating+Income

Operating income, representing income from ordinary business activities, excludes expenses, such as interest and taxes.

Which implies to me that Sony lost 1.7 billion from the gap between sales revenue and the sum costs of manufacture, employing workers, advertising etc. They also had to pay the sum of 1.2 billion dollars on taxes, and to cover the interest raised on the company's debt

In the Sony release they say

Sony Corp. has revised its projected annual operating loss from a previously expected figure of ¥100 billion ($1.1bn) to as much as ¥260 billion ($2.9bn).

As previously reported, the loss will be the company’s first in 14 years and only the second in its history.

It is all very confusing :)