Officials from Sony Corporation have announced the company’s consolidated results for the second quarter ended September 30th. The company reported ¥53.2 billion ($500.7m) in net income, up 61.6 percent on 2003; on revenues of ¥1,702.3 billion – a 5.3 percent decrease on the same period last year. The company attributed the decline, in part, due to issues around outsourcing console production to China.
In the games division alone, sales and operating revenue was ¥199.6 billion ($1.0bn), down 25.8 percent on the previous year. The company’s operation profit of ¥2.2 billion ($20.7m) last year was reduced to an unrecorded, but apparently very minor, loss.
The fall in sales was attributed to the cost and problems associated with reducing production shipments of the current model of the console, to make way for the new, smaller PlayStation 2 model. The company also blames strategic price reductions for the decline in hardware sales, noting that software sales increased in the U.S. and Europe, while decreasing in Japan.
Worldwide, the company sold 1.99 million PS2 consoles in the quarter, a decrease of 6.79 million units on last year. Software sales increased by 12 million units to 56 million.
