spiderman is partially to blame (in a backwards kinda way), but it's pretty remarkable that sony's quarterly profit dropped 98%. yeah, that really says 98%: "Sony said Thursday it earned 1.1 billion yen in the first quarter of its fiscal year, down from 57.2 billion yen for the same period last year." of course, to be fair, "Sony officials acknowledge that fiscal 2002 profits were partly a fluke, bolstered by the blockbuster movie "Spider-Man." Sony's profits for the fiscal year ended March 31 totaled 115.5 billion yen, up more than sevenfold from 15.3 billion yen in fiscal 2001."