Toshiba Has Staggering $$ HD DVD Losses

Now that Toshiba has left the HD DVD format in the past, you might be wondering to yourself: what kind of financial motivation might have been behind this move? While it is hard to speculate exactly how this played into the final equation, we can tell you the Japanese consumer electronics giant took a huge hit in this area.

A recent Bloomberg story tells us exactly how bad Toshiba got slapped. The company reported it would take "a  45 billion yen charge to write down the value of its HD DVD assets, forcing Toshiba to face its first annual profit drop in six years." That works out to nearly $454 million American.

Taken into further analysis, Toshiba said specific losses in the HD DVD group almost doubled "to 65 billion yen this fiscal year, compared with the 50 billion yen deficit forecast earlier." That is $656 million American, give or take.

How ever you look at it, that's an ugly ending folks.