Losses grow for PlayStation

Sony’s games division has reported operating losses of 120 million (29.2 billion Yen) for its first quarter of 2007 after a difficult period for the console, reports The Times – more than double the loss for the same period in 2006.

Sony said that it shipped 710,000 PS3 game consoles in the quarter, less than one fourth of the 3.43 million Wii consoles sold by Nintendo in the same period through April and June.

But the corporation’s profits have more than doubled in the same timeframe.

Sales of items such as digital cameras and the fall in the Japanese currency against the US dollar and Europe has helped the company pull in net earnings of 269 million (66.5 billion Yen) for its first quarter, up from 32.3 billion Yen last year.

The company said it now aims to increase PS3 shipments to 11 million units by 2008.