Yes, but it could turn out to be no where near as bad as many predicted.

After the huge billion$ losses Sony took over the last year this - if correct - is "not so good"?

Christmas? The analysts took christmas into account along with the cost-cutting restructuring sony did and still forecasted a major loss for the quarter.

You know what, I am beginning to think that even if Sony posted a trillion$ profit there are those like yourself who will still call it a poor result, just because it is sony.

Vice versa if nintendo or MS made only 50cent  profit it would be still be a marvelous result.

I thought you were more balanced than that.

Please tell me your a joke account, can anyone seriously be that blind? Are you so much of a fanboy that you think only Sony fanboys are true gamers?

Don't even get into an argument about losses. Not only did the PS3 completely wipe away every single cent of profit Sony made on the PS2, to compare Sony to MS in financials is a joke. MS has never, and I mean never posted a loss. That is far far more impressive than Sony. MS just posted a record quarter with $350 million profit just from the entertainment division.

Some people on these forums truly astound me.

At the people riding kowens balls. He didn't say anything bad about Sony he's just stating a pretty obvious fact. While the PS3 is doing really well compared to other quarters these results in no way guarantee an over all profit.

this is good =p

The only significant expenses not covered by operating profit is interest payments and taxes.

While taxes never entirely wipe out your operating profit, interest payments certainly can. Given how deep in the red Sony has been as a company in the last year and a bit it's likely they have some big interest payments to make. Those big interest payments come out of the operating profit before taxes come out, so it's conceivable that the Japanese taxman won't be receiving a single yen from Sony for the December quarter.

The excellent thing about an operating profit is that the company actually has some cash to be able to meet it's debt / interest obligations, rather than having to go deeper in debt (or delve further into cash reserves) as a consequence of an operating loss.

This is very good news for Sony, whether or not their net result is profit or loss. Obviously a net profit for the quarter would be the best news, but it's not necessary for this to be good news.

Sony makes a profit? NOOOOOO!!! Satan has lost!!!

It's still a good sign.

To get to Net profit i beieve all that's left is taxes and... interest?

They may still be fine.  Though Sony does take out a lot of loans for some reason.

That must have been hard to do...saying it is good news that is.

The 375m profit posted by MS's entertainment department is also OPERATIONAL.

Funny you didn't bother to point this out to anyone posting in the MS profits thread but every two bleedin' seconds you bring it up here.

If leo is defensive all things sony what about you and microsoft?

I am confused : Is this good news or bad news, I wouldn't know reading this thread.

Well maybe you should read my post properly. I said it's good news and I did not say it's "not so good".

Goodish would be the way to put it I think.

It's an indication that Sony won't have a HUGE loss.  Outside that it's unsure.

Still, I'm pretty sure it's safe to say the Playstation/Vaio division made a profit, since interest which could wipe out all the profits and put them in the red would end up being in the "Finanicals" division no matter what the loans and interest were taken out for.