Officials from Sony have announced details of the group’s first quarter financial results, with net income falling by almost a half from a year previously, down 47.4 percent to ¥35.0 billion ($330m).
With sales and operating revenues increasing by only 0.1 percent to ¥1.98 trillion ($18.7m) the company was forced to issue a profit warning - citing increasing price competition, a strong yen and problems at Sony Ericsson as the root cause.
However, the company’s PlayStation 3 business has seen a doubling of sales since the same time the previous year. Sony now expects improvements in the games division’s performance to spearhead a general recovery in the company’s fortunes.
Sales and operating revenue for the game division saw an increase of 16.7 percent on the previous year to ¥229.6 billion ($2.17m). The division also moved from an operating loss of ¥29.2 billion in the first quarter of last year to a profit of ¥5.4 billion ($51m) this year.
The improvement was attributed specifically to the PlayStation 3, with hardware cost reductions and increased sales of software contributing alongside strong sales of PSP hardware. Despite a continued fall in PlayStation 2 sales overall, hardware sales saw an increase year-on-year, however overall software sales fell.
Worldwide hardware unit sales for the PlayStation 3 during the quarter stood at 1.56 million units – more than double that of the previous year’s figure of 700,000 units. Software sales saw an increase of 18.1 million units to 22.8 million for the quarter.
Hardware sales of the PSP increased by 1.59 million units to 3.72 million, with an attendant software increase of 2.0 million units for a new total of 11.8 million.
As expected, PlayStation 2 hardware sales fell by 1.15 million units to 1.51 million, with software sales down 11.8 million units to 19.3 million.
