Every month when the NPD releases its sales figures, there’s a lot of fawning over the overabundance of numbers that translate into profits for game companies. But what gets lost in all of this is some of the intricacies behind the numbers that are revealed to the public. General speculation follows the train of thought that the company which is in first place is usually making the most money, but if you look at the sales of last gen, the Nintendo’s GameCube which trailed behind the PS2, and Xbox still turned a profit and actually ended up being in second place in terms of profit.

At the recent Games Convention Developers Conference Shiny Entertainment, founder Dave Perry gave us some insight on the modern industry as he sees it, but what was really interesting in his conference was some of the hard numbers he brought up from research firm DFC Intelligence. According to the research numbers provided by the firm, Sony has lost more money selling PS3s than it made in the entire lifetime of the PS2’s existence. Estimates put the numbers around a $3 billion dollar loss for the company, but with no official word from Sony it’s hard to gage how much the PS3 has cost them to sell at a loss.