Sony profits soar but games division bombs thanks to PS3
Sony have announced their latest quarterly profit figures, and the company as a whole has seen a huge increase. Unfortunately the games division, responsible for the PS3, PS2 and PSP lost a huge amount of money, thus ending the old trend for the Playstation bailing the other divisions out of financial trouble.
Sony as a company is looking very rosy, with net profits of $645 million announced for the last 3 months. This is forty three times higher than at the same time last year, with digital cameras, and flat panel TVs credited with the turnaround in fortunes.
The games division however (cue understatement of the year) didn’t fare quite so well. The PS3 has directly contributed to a huge loss of $841 million for the Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. subsidiary. This is more than double what the games division lost for its parent company in the same timeframe last year.
Sony of course attributed the losses to the loss they make on every PS3 console they sell, which we all knew about anyway. But software sales were also down, with the PS2 selling 9.2 million units less than last year, and the PSP selling 600,000 less.
According to the Guardian Blog, Sony chief executive Howard Stringer has been boosting the company’s performance by getting rid of under performing and non key businesses and products. You have to wonder how long figures like this would have to carry on before he decided to cull the PS3 project altogether and take the hit.
Okay, that’s not going to happen, Sony need the PS3 to succeed, especially for the Blu-ray DVD format to become unstoppably dominant. But it is telling that after many years of Playstation sales supporting the rest of Sony’s divisions, the shoe is now firmly on the other foot. If Sony was wholly a games company it would be dead in the water by now.
Sony are going to have to hope and pray (if they’re that way inclined) that the new pricing and lower spec model strategy they have recently adopted helps push sales up quickly. Christmas should see a sales increase but what future in the new year?
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October 25th, 2007
[...] Original post by Google Inc. [...]
October 26th, 2007
[...] Gamer.Blorge [...]
October 26th, 2007
Does this sound familar at all?
http://www.forbes.com/2001/01/25/0125disaster.html
It’s no different this time around. Sure it’s not been easy to combat Microsoft’s year headstart and a army of 11 million Xbots, but it’s clawed back nearly 6 million console sales in a year.
Personally, I am glad Sony did the honourable thing, and released the console when it was ready, rather than taking the shortcut like Microsoft did, and short changing consumers with a half-baked unreliable console, and then releasing newer more feature complete reliable versions further down the road.
October 26th, 2007
[...] Dave Parrack added an interesting post today on Sony profits soar but games division bombs thanks to PS3.Here’s a small reading:The games division however (cue understatement of the year) didn’t fare quite so well. The PS3 has directly contributed to a huge loss of $841 million for the Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. subsidiary. This is more than double what … [...]
October 26th, 2007
Read this:
Hubris: Sony’s Greatest Quotes
http://next-generationsystems.blogspot.com/2007/06/sonys-greatest-quotes.html
Which is the reason why the media, the press and the public seem to take pleasure in seeing Sony continues to fail, fail, and fail.
Which is the reason why God has intended Sony, PS3 and Blu-ray to fail, so that Sony will learn humility.
Is it fair for PS3 to pay for Sony’s past sins? Absolutely. So that Sony will be humbled.
The reckoning is finally coming for Sony, and it couldn’t be soon enough.
October 26th, 2007
[...] Sony profits soar but games division bombs thanks to PS3 [...]
November 2nd, 2007
[...] fortunes will filter out to the USA and Europe or stay a purely Japanese affair. With Sony’s recent admittance of their games division losing $841 million over the last three months, something needed to happen to revitalise the company’s [...]
January 10th, 2008
[...] loss the Japanese electronics and entertainment company reported the same period a year earlier. Sony profits soar but games division bombs thanks to PS3 – GAMER.BLORGE.com The games division however (cue understatement of the year) didn’t fare quite so well. The [...]
January 31st, 2008
[...] are getting better for Sony, and especially the Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. subsidiary, who in October had to admit to losses of $841 million over the last quarter. That deficit has now been turned around to a [...]
May 14th, 2008
there are only 2 ways to save ps3..
1)more killer games
2)piracy enabled
-enabled to boot downloaded games from ps3′ HDD.
I woulndt mind paying high price if for the CONSOLE ONLY if ps3 can be cracked! wat pisses me off is the price of original ps3 games. It is so FXXking expensive.Buy few of those n I can get a new ps3 console.It’s totally not worth it(games)!