LordSpaz, the reason the price per share is so high is because there are so few shares being offered. For comparison, Microsoft has 9,375,492,496 shares of common stock outstanding as of August 1, 2007.

Sony seems a mess, Samsung is beating them hands down.

Oh...and one more thing. Technically, my previous post assumes this has all happened, which it hasn't. Sony hasn't made this money yet, they won't until October 11th. So, perhaps no one will buy the stock and Sony will go bankrupt. We'll see. : )

theo2by4: While that is a very valid point, for the most part, we don't know if they planned this or not. I really can't imagine that a company as HUGE as Sony didn't know the hole they would be getting into with the PS3. They have said before that they are taking a big loss for each PS3 sold. Now that they've gotten the manufacturing costs down so much, maybe they're breaking even, but I doubt they're making a profit yet. I think (I don't KNOW this, I'm speculating) that in gaming, a console isn't considered profitable until it "pays off" the R&D; costs. THEN the company can consider it a profitable console. Needless to say, every single PS2 (yes, that's a '2') that is sold (again, seven years into it's cycle) is gravy or icing or whatever fancy condiment you want to call it. So, if Sony knew they were going to lose boats full of money in the early years of PS3, I would have to imagine that they were talking VERY early on about what steps they might need to take in order to cover that loss.

I think one of the biggest pieces left out of this is the fact that people seem to think that Sony is shocked by the sales of the PS3. I don't think they are. I think they are not what they want them to be, but I can almost guarantee you that not a single soul at Sony is panicking right now. They are more likely saying, "This is all going according to plan."

Please don't forget, the shares were sold for a high price. Over $3,000 for a share of stock? That's pretty ridiculous (unless I read that wrong). I mean, I'm no financial adviser or anything, but most American stocks are less than $50...Microsoft's stock (just cause they're already part of this discussion) is floating around $30, State Farm (who sells insurance) is at about $27 and Met Life (also insurance) is at about $70 (I got all those numbers from the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ websites) and Sony just sold 795,000 shares of ONE of it's Units. That's not even a MAJORITY! It's only 40%. So, even though they sold all that, they still control the unit.

Also, an IPO is called (if you didn't know, but I'm sure a lot of you did) an Initial Public Offering. It's when a company that has been going it alone says, "Hey, Public, you want a piece of this?" Then, the public buys shares and then they get dividends and stuff. So, Sony sold ALL of those shares, which means every single one of those people buying those shares is confident that this unit from Sony WILL BE PROFITABLE. That money is then funnelled back to Sony to do with what it pleases.

I just wanted to clarify those two points. Sony didn't really "sell" anything. They offered a bunch of folks the opportunity to share in their profits, for a price. That's what they sold.

KingKobra2K2: This unit sells insurance. I'm not sure what kind, but that's what they do. As we all know, the world loves insurance, so it's probably a pretty solid unit.

Sony selling off stock for 3 billion and putting it into another department that doesn't have enough funds is a bad thing. This shows that Sony's budget isn't large enough and that they need to make a lot of extra money. Also in the long run they're going to buy all that stock back and going to have to pay that 3 billion back to the investors.

This move could really help Sony, but if it doesn't work out to well it could do a lot more damage down the road.

At the moment this is a bad thing unless Sony can make a HUGE profit.

Sony needs to tread VERY lightly...

So, what does this financial unit actually do?

[This message was deleted at the request of a moderator or administrator]

to @fastgamer

thats why PS3 fanboys suck because they just only thinking about them self....not others..and that why the PS3 is going down all the way...if u can afford HD tv..then just be it...but MS give the choice to the users to choose...not like sony....put all the features but in the end the consoles just worthless..just like their fanboys too...

Azhar85 do you live in a cave? who wants to use vga now a days. amazon has blu-ray discs at an average price of £17 some higher newer ones and some lower spiderman the trilogy is going to be £37 where the matrix trilogy on hd-dvd is £54 in shops and the annoying bit is they said hd dvd is not that hard to produce so they overcharge you for it. next month you have haze, r+c and uncharted 2 EXCLUSIVES and one timed.

[This message was deleted at the request of the original poster]

there's no reason to buy PS3...
- no VGA cable
-blu-ray disc price still not going down..
-games line-up are sucks...
-every it's exclusives are going to the Xbox 360....

you really do have some great comments, LordSpaz, I completely agree with you. M$ are going to have to put out a new console within the next couple of years, while Sony will be getting into their stride with the PS3. The way Sony are going to pump this money back into there games division reminds me of a rumour a few weeks ago that Sony was going to buy Rockstar from TakeTwo. Considering the problems TakeTwo are having, that would be a pretty good deal.

whoops typo, meant UT3, lol

Hunawearl some games now? ok lets see, resistance:fall of man, Warhawk, Heavenly sword, motorstorm, ridge racer 7, ninja gaiden sigma thats for now, and for rest of year, theres rachet and flank future: Tools of destruction, Uncharted Drake's Fortune, Haze, UT4(for this year), gran turismo 5 prolouge, Playstation home public BETA, maybe a killzone 2 multiplayer beta, so thats everything for this year, and i;m guessing your a 360 person so you have gears of war mass effect and halo 3 as your biggest known ones, hmm wait what that? gears of war on pc for $50 and bonus content? what does bioware do with their xbox games, oh yea they go to pc (KOTOR,KOTOR2, jade empire), and what happened to the other halos? oh yea pc too, and guess what, they are all cheaper on pc! i'll have fun with the games that are out now, and look forward to killzone 2, little big planet, MGS4, infamous, white knight story, and final fantasy XIII, oh and i'll enjoy ALL my old ps2 games on my 60gb ps3 with the emotion engine so yea thats not a lotta games

lol, there'll be no price cut from this... but maybe Sony Playstation will be able to afford some more development teams... anywho thats a lot of money to throw around... if the PS3 fails after that then I think it's game over for them... but I need to get a PS3 before that happens...

1 year later and the ps3 fanboys still saying "wait and see the power of the ps3", "the 360 is maxed out" Lmao - the ps2 was supposedly maxed out early in it's life cycle, then God of War came along. I could care less about potential or 120 fps, eye-bleeding graphics- give me GAMES NOW - not promises!

this is why i hate the internet sometimes. gives every fanboy an outlet to spout retarded opinions. M$ is horrible because of this..........Sony sucks because of this.........it gets old. Heck, even what i am typing has been said a bazillion times before so what ever..............

deity you are mad because ps3 is not going anywhere. haha your pcport break box will lose soon.

wow losing 237 million and still have 540 million profit this quarter, it would take a lot of time of unprofitable quarters from the game devision to count sony out.

I wonder what shareholders are thinking. Over-saturating the share amount will delude the gains that existing shareholders get, unless this immediate capital gains can somehow turn more of a profit, but that all depends on where the money goes, and whether where that money is invested will actually turn a profit or just cover up losses. I can see some people having high hopes for the holiday shopping season, which I'm sure a lot of HDTV sales are going to turn a profit, which has been noted as keeping the company out of a net loss last year. However, if this money is going to be used on making 40 GB PS3 that'll still sell for less than it costs to make, I don't think shareholders, new or old, are going to be happy. Let's hope that Bravia is a hot item.

It is important because this IPO just enable the 399 price cut.

im sorry .... i dont understand why this is important????

Can't the PS3 just die already, there are much better systems to spend our money and read about.

I guess, really that, a quarter of a million pounds lost in three months from gaming entertainment is... Alot?

uchitha wtf are you talking about Blu Ray>Dual Layer. Blu Ray= Longer Games and More Content.

That will hold them for a while. Changing the price would be the wisest effort (certainly less difficult than the "budget version" rumor). They still don't get that people don't want to pay that much money. And once they find a buying audience, they need more games.
Good games.
As soon as it was clear they were pushing for power, I knew an astonishingly beautiful trainwreak like Lair would come around and question the worth of everything they told us about their angle. Fortunately I was already sold on Ratchet & Clank and I'm looking forward to Uncharted, but there's got to be more than that.

The article writer does not understand what is going on. This isn't a sell-off anymore than Google sold Google when it had its IPO. Don't understand most comments here. Sony made $540 million the past quarter. All this sinking ship stuff is gibberish. Anyone know if MS has made a penny from XBOX or 360 ever? The only company that makes money is Nitendo, and that's because the Wii has the tech specs of...well I can't think of anything low enough to compare it to. Maybe the gamecube? Anyway, people need to chill out. Its a console. You are not on a team.

This is going to fund the loss they'll be taking with the $400 40GB PS3s that will be hitting the market very soon.

God, the fanboys are coming out of the woodwork to defend a sinking ship. Look Sony made the same mistakes Nintendo did back SNES/Gamecube days. Remember when Nintendo dropped Sony to go with Philips and Sony turned around and created the Playstation in the first place? It was sheer arrogance that led to their downfall and history is repeating itself again. Hopefuly Sony will get a clue and change the pricing structure of the PS3 so more people can afford it. just bought my 360 3 days ago and I'm very happy so far, its a new Zephry unit so hopefully it won't Red Ring on me. (Crosses fingers)
Sony products "used to be the best" but that was 10 yrs ago after they moved factories to Mexico and Malaysia. I work at an Electronics Big box store and Sony products are returned for defects more often than the other brands now. I'll get a PS3 when it hits the $399 in a year or so by then they actually have some games on the thing I want to play that are exclusives, right now its just a big Blue-ray player....

ok MS is a software\console developing company where as sony is pretty much universal( tvs, cameras, dvd players, projectors, handy cams, and the friggin list goes on and on) and also universally well known by every 1. even if i dont perfectly understand wat those figures mean i get the hint sony is trying to make up for lost $$$. so to any geniuses who dont get my point, no matter how much money sony spends on its research and development without having any $$ coming back they r still 99% away from being run out of business.sorry to disappoint u ms fangirls but like it or not sony is staying with us for long long time

ok MS is a software\console developing company where as sony is pretty much universal( tvs, cameras, dvd players, projectors, handy cams, and the friggin list goes on and on) and also universally well known by every 1. even if i dont perfectly understand wat those figures mean i get the hint sony is trying to make up for lost $$$. so to any geniuses who dont get my point, no matter how much money sony spends on its research and development without having any $$ coming back they r still 99% away from being run out of business.sorry to disappoint u ms fangirls but like it or not sony is staying with us for long long time

the plan should better be good, considering all of their products and the new plans .... i don't see a bright future for them... specially with the problems of PS3 and Blu-ray the company is struggling big time .... however, there is a great potential.... a good plan is wot is required ...

I heard from people who has x360 they want PS3 instead

i hear a lot of people saying 360 graphics are 50/50 or a bit better, but if they are 50/50 and they had a year start what does that say about the 360? it can look a bit better than a first generation ps3 game while its on its own 2nd generation of games (generation meaning a year it has been out in the market) I'll stick with my ps3 that i just got and loving, enjoying my 5 free blu ray movies i got from it and can't wait for the onslaught of games this winter and next year

I think that those that are against Sony and for Xbox360, deep down are really scared to admit that the PS3 is gonna be better than the Xbox360. No doubt Sony will have killer games coming up and will start to utilize and optimize its power. So then PS3 and Xbox360 will all have great games that no Xbox360 fan will use "games" as the reason the 360 is better. And what you xbox360 fanboys are scared of is that now that Halo3 is out..thats about as good as the xbox360 can get while the PS3..oh well its just getting started.

I see a lot of numbers and don't understand a thing

@RW34finsfan

You sound like a fan boy. The facts are that pretty much everything that has been released on both consoles looks better on the 360. I'm not saying that games on teh PS3 won't look better down the road, but what good is a system that no one knows how to put to good use?

You guys are pretty funny down there talking about what has better graphics. As of now, with the devs not even nearly knowing how to properly utilize the PS3's power, the graphics are still a 50/50 split with the 360. If you read the article released by EA on Madden '08 for the PS3, which looks virtually identical on the 360, you would know that it only utilizes 20% of the PS3's power. 20%! Thats a sliver of the cake folks. So before you go rambling your mouths, remember that the 360 versions of games are able to be perfected for the system unlike the PS3, at least for the time being.

All you guys spouting off how much better off Sony is than Microsoft better go do some research first. Microsoft made over $14 billion in profit this past year vs Sony's $1 bllion. And that was AFTER taking the $1.5 bil charge for the rrod warranty ext and the $613 million european antitrust suit fine.
And yes jboonzaier Sony is trying to overhaul their company - that's why Sir Howard Stringer was brought in to run it a couple of years ago.

I think that anyone who thinks this means the end for a company like Sony should shut up, stop breathing and stop thinking because clearly you don’t know what you’re on about. A lot of companies sell stock to recover cost when research & development and marketing cost are as high as with the PS3. The fool down below who claims that Sony need to overhaul their whole company is clear not an Marketing genius because if the company did not have a marketable (profitable and socially responsible) company they would not be able to sell share to the value of U$3 billion dollars. So what Sony could do with their 3 Billion is make a greater profit elsewhere which is most likely what they can do and if they wished in future they could either buy back the stocks (partially or the complete listing) which the probably won't, baring market conditions remain the same. Lets look at what Microsoft has done the put up 1/1.5 U$ Billion give or take a few million to recover [hardware failure warranties and being sued for faulty disks on top of R&D; and marketing for the Xbox 360 (which must have been a lot) and marketing of games like Halo3] out of the main company MS Windows, which already has to deal with the EU anti-trust violations and fines (how much was that again) then tell me who looks to be in a better position.

Thanks cadahnic1. I try not to think of myself as a fanboy, but I do like Sony's stuff. But I do wish they'd make more games... : )

and that's a great point Spidey223. easy to lost sight of.

@spidey223: thank you for taking the time to enlighten the masses. It seems alot of people here are way to quickly jumping to conclusions.

Lord Spaz I have to agree on pretty much every point you made. Thank you for not being to fan boyish even though your rational thought may be frowned upon here. Truth is Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are multibillion dollar companies, but as Sony has this thing down. They get longevity from their consoles everytime and that is the make of a good console.

the playstations controllers have always sucked parallel analog sticks that was a dumb idea so have fun with using the d-pad because your reaction time sucks because your an idiot ps fan boy ****

posters, a company sells shares at a PROFIT for big GAINS, not because of losses to incur more losses. basic business 101. if a company was a liability, no one would buy the shares. a company who sells shares under their projected share price is one that should be worried about, because they are bottoming out. a company that sells shares at a HIGHER projection MAKES LOTS OF MONEY! and makes their business BIGGER! the fact that they can sell shares of this part of their company for such a lofty price per share shows how potentially powerful this whole deal is. it's actually quite optimistic for Sony. what's so hard to understand about that?

I think something that is being completely left out of these comments is the long term movement of Sony. Sony has been around since the end of World War II. That's a lot longer than most of us have been alive. They have been making sound business decision for more than half of a century, I don't think this one decision is going to make or break them.

Also, the entire business culture in Japan is completely different from America. In Japan, decisions are made with a ten year period in mind, not a one year or even five year. So, in ten years, will this selling of assets even be a blip on their fiscal radar? I doubt it. Also, since I doubt any of us work for Sony, we have NO IDEA what went into this decision. I do know that these kinds of decisions do NOT get made easily and the entire board would have had to vote on it.

Keep in mind, the company overall was profitable, so selling this off, technically, isn't "covering a loss"...because there wasn't one. A loss is when you are NOT profitable.

And finally, I'd like to point something out. The PS1 came out in late 1994. The PS2 came out in 2000. The PS3 came out in 2006. Those are gaming cycles of SIX years for the creation of a console. The Xbox came out in late 2001. The Xbox 360 came out in 2005. That's a FOUR year gaming cycle. The PS2 isn't even DONE yet. The Xbox is no longer supported. So, Microsoft is sticking with a cycle that is about four years and Sony is going to get another two-three years out of theirs. Which vision has more longevity? The Xbox 360 (originally) didn't have and HD disc capacity built in. It wasn't wireless as a standard. It doesn't have any USB support. It didn't even have a hard drive standard. How can Microsoft expect this system to last four years? That's what I'd like to know. Are they expecting people to continue to sink money into it? We'll see. The PS3 (which in the interest of full disclosure, I own) is bluetooth and now is wireless standard. It has a hard drive standard (which is upgradable). It has HD capabilities out of the box with an HDMI port standard (which Microsoft has added, I think). This console will have a longer life, because the technology is already there. Microsoft will have to put out another console in a two-three years, which will involve more development costs and new factories and new production facilities, etc. Sony will not incur those costs for another five to six years (probably). So, I don't think we can look at this selling of assets as anything except a sound business decision made by a giant company fully capable of managing it's own affairs.

As a side note, I have a friend who has a 360, which I LOVE to play. It has some GREAT games. But when I was trying to decide which console to buy, I saw no real decision. The PS3 is not more expensive when you add in all the technology it has. The HD DVD drive almost more than makes that up alone. Anyhow, I think they are both great consoles. I just like the one I have.

@darendt69 & ColdfireTrilogy

The Xbox games looked and ran better than PS2 games from the day of launch. There was never one multiplatform game that ran better or looked better on the PS2. Your either delusional, blind, retarded, or just a fanboy which would make you all of the above,.

dude thats why they made the controler s series

@Maxxorz
Actually they did. It wasnt until the ened that the xbox games looked a little better than the PS2 games. And only a few at that. Even then it couldnt make up for that horrid controller. To this day that is what keeps me away from the 360.