You wouldn't think that someone could make something as bad as "poor sales" sound like a good thing, but that someone's obviously not Sony. Sony CFO Nobuyuki Oneda told journalists, that behind the poor sales of the PS3 there's a silver lining, behind the sales figures:

Sales of the PS3 have risen but we booked losses due to our strategic decision to price it below the (production) cost... Actually, because the number of units sold was not as high as we hoped, the loss was better than our original expectation.

What this means is simple, with production costs sky high, Sony have kept the price of the PS3 relatively low in hopes that once production costs come down, they can start making profits, and in the mean time, make a loss. However, with poor sales, it has meant that whilst production costs have been coming down slowly, they haven't been making a big a loss as they should, which has also meant that profits are up.

Oneda can't imagine that his is the official party line, but it makes a handy retort to claims that Sony is doing badly both on the books and in the marketplace, competing against Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii. Losing less money is definitely a benefit, although perhaps less so when your entire business model is built on getting these things out the door, whatever the cost.