Which is why the games division got new management in 2008 and has been slowly becoming profitable ever since, the turn around on the PS3 was due to new management. The cell processor, overall, made Sony money (between the sale and the uses it was put to prior to that). Not every bit of tech turns a profit, but if all your tech at least breaks even and one in ten makes a huge profit, well, that'll do. The cell did a little better than breaking even. Bear in mind the project to develop the architecture started in 2001. I'll concede Sony's business strategy has been steadily going downhill in an overall sense. Cell is still a cool piece of tech though, 200 PS3s running in a network cracked an SSL certificate.
It was Toshiba, the cell was jointly developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM.