PlayStation revenues down $1.3bn in 09

Sony has described 2009 as a turning point” for PS3 and ELSPA said the console was last year’s star” performer, but new analysis from Gamasutra paints a far less rosy picture for the PlayStation platform holder.

More specifically, the site claims that Sony suffered a $1.3bn year-on-year drop in revenue in its PlayStation division and saw its US marketshare revenue drop from 30 per cent to 26 per cent.

That’s not to say that PS3 isn’t on the up – it clearly is. But PS2, once the backbone of Sony’s PlayStation operations, is now a machine in drastic decline. Gamasutra says PS2 revenues were down by $700m year-on-year in 2009, thanks in part to a global price drop.

2009 wasn’t kind to PSP, either. Despite the launch of PSPgo in the latter half of the year unit sales were down 1.3m year-on-year, resulting in $225m in lost revenue. Another $200m vanished thanks to decreasing PSP software sales.

The numbers bring bad news for Microsoft, too, which suffered its second year of declining revenue. However, both hardware and software sales were up in 2009, meaning the losses came from hardware price cuts.

The real winner is Nintendo. Despite a $200k drop in revenue (the same as Microsoft) the Japanese platform holder saw its market share jump by three points to 50 per cent – not bad for a firm some tipped to be withdrawing from the hardware race after the struggles it endured with the GameCube.