simply put they employ too many workers. the game sales seem fine to me.

@ Cat, Spore took 3-4 years to develop, this equals Hours spent by a team to do it and that means money. Even if they didn't spent much on the actual engine and features of the game, they did spent with labour. BTW, they did develop the engine to the Creatures editor, wich is one, if not the only strong point of the game.

@ Shio, while I can believe you when you talk about pc gaming strenghts these days, even if others don't, you have to admit that it's marginalized by most of the gaming community and media, although undeserving, IMO.

Purchasing expenses are rarely included in profit-loss numbers. After all, They have a value of  0 from an accounting perspective: They are converting money into capital, which was probably priced at the purchasing cost.

It'd take forever to explain exactly how this things are done, and their accountants could have done a number of different things to make the numbers look slightly different, but no matter what they did, the effect of an aquisition itself nto their profits is probably negligible.