Sony Reports Massive Sales Loss

Sony’s Networked Products and Services Division has just reported a sizable drop in overall sales and profit over the last fiscal year (ended 31 march).

The division saw a 10.2% drop in sales to R132.9 billion despite trimming its operating losses by R378 million to R7.3 billion.

While PS3 sales were up  by almost 2 million units and software (games and DLC) sales increased from 103.7 million to 115.6 million, it was the PS2 (!) and PSP sales which brought the figures down somewhat. PSP console sales were down 14.1 million to 9.9 million with its game sales down from 50.3 million to 44.4 million units. The PS2 saw only a small drop in console sales, from 7.9 million to 7.3 million but it was dealt a devastating blow in terms of game sales with teh amount of games sold more than halving.

“Sales in the game business decreased mainly due to unfavourable foreign currency exchange rates, decreases in unit sales of PSP hardware and of PS2 software,” Sony said.

“This decrease was partially offset by increased unit sales of PS3 software, driven by the expanded PS3 platform as a result of the launch of a new model.”

It seems that the new model PS3 with its potential profitability can’t come fast enough for Sony.