I don't believe them, they are probably defining loss in a creative way. Sony in particular is a giant spiderweb of a company, the scary thing about it is that very few people know how big it is, only that it's much larger than it allows itself to be presented as in rankings and such. Sony is pretty much the basis for those evil Japanacorps from cyberpunk fiction that were going to take over the world due to secretly being more powerful than most nations. Sony in particular is involve in everything from consumer electronics (they started out producing rice cookers), to movies and music, to heavy machinery, robotics, and manufacturing. In all honesty they probably have interests involved in every aspect of manufacture starting with the mining for base materials, to the processing, to the manufacture of parts, and then assembly. One of the big things about Sony was how despite appearances they were arguably able to not only create high end products, but also do every aspect of it in house to help protect their technologies.
At any rate back with the PS-3 Sony was involved in a battle for the next generation video disc, pitting Blu Ray against HDDVD. PS-3 shortages were largely caused by the lack of the lasers they used to read Blu Ray discs due to Sony repurposing so many of them towards dedicated Blu Ray players in an attempt to get the players on the market and out saturate HDDVD. The ironic thing being that Sony was selling dedicated disc players for more than the PS-3 system (something which ironically continues until today). Sony allegedly wasn't taking an actual loss on the PS-3 itself,
but basically the loss was that at that time they felt they could make hundreds of more dollars a pop by putting the lasers into another product. The reality of the time being that video games were seen as a toy, where adult consumers with money were more likely to want to buy a dedicated video machine. Despite the technology for multi-purpose devices being there it had yet to catch on (going back as far as the PS-2). The fact that you could get a PS-3 for a fraction of the price of a dedicated Blu Ray player AND play games on it too was something a few people laughed about at the time (and still do to be honest).
All told I'd imagine Sony is making the current claim to sound good, and honestly if there is some truth to it, it probably has to do with internal optimization of their products and parts more than an actual loss.
Remember, people bootleg hardware for a fraction of the price. I'm kind of interested in seeing if these digital innovations and security features in this generation will prevent a Chinese knockoff within 3 months (including the Sony logos) for one third the price. Remember we live in a world where not only do you have people making functional, counterfeit I-products, but you actually have people selling them from fake stores that match legitimate Apple retailers perfectly, who actually claim to work for Apple (I've read articles about this).
