@CGI-Quality
Sony and Sega are entirely different beasts. Sega is a industry specific company. While Sony would be a conglomerate. Sega had to wage its war to remain a major player in its industry. They had no real choice no matter how little the margin, or how high the danger. Sony has to fight a war on half a dozen fronts. So for them gaming is simply a battlefield. For them the real danger comes from the very real risk that placing too many resources there will jeopardize or cost them too many battles on other fields.
Sega had no choice, and as you can see now losing their war has cost them heavily. Sony has a choice, and they must view gaming within a context. Winning a battle field at the cost of losing the war is a fools bargain. Sega is the corporate analogy to the Alamo a hopeless battle that had to be fought. For Sony right now the console war would be analogous to the battle for Stalingrad. Where Sony is pouring in a lot of resources for not much gain. Merely a battle of attrition.
The truth is Sony has a lot of choices. They may not be very appealing to fans, but they may be more profitable and practical for Sony. The truth is software production is safer with far less of a downside. In fact if Sony had been doing this for the past two years they would have been able to retain more assets, and might even have remained profitable. This would have even allowed them to be more aggressive in other areas where they are having difficulties. Such as in the area of music or televisions.
I think if this generation has proved anything its that console manufacturing can be nothing less then highly speculative, and at worst a black hole. With the level of competition Sony is facing it is also fairly certain that they will never see the kind of profit margin they enjoyed in the past or would like to see. Ideally you don't want to be manufacturing anything with returns merely in the single digits. You definitely don't want to be manufacturing something that can cost you a very negative return on investment.
Sony doesn't have to be in the role of a manufacturer to make great money from gaming. Hell they probably would do better by becoming a software developer while playing the field. A lot less risk, and still great profit to be had. They could even bring their play book to bare against the much softer third party software developers. A battle they could very well win seeing as they would no longer need to stifle themselves.
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