PS3 sales up year-on-year

PlayStation platform holder Sony has reported losses of YEN 26.3bn (175) for its 2009 Q2 with its Networked Products & Services Division – which houses its PlayStation and PC operations – seeing losses increase year-on-year.

The PlayStation division suffered a 24 per cent drop in sales compared to the same period in 2008, with losses growing from YEN 40.6bn to YEN 58.8bn. For the first half of Sony’s 2009 financial year sales fell by YEN 860bn and losses grew to YEN 98.6bn – an increase of over YEN 60bn.

However, sales of PS3 – which were boosted by the recent price cut and launch of the Slim model – hit 3.2m in the period – up from 2.4m in the same quarter in 2008.

23.9m pieces of PS3 software were shifted in the period – this compares to 21.2m a year ago. Surprisingly, PSP software was also up from 11.8m tp 12.9m.

There was bad news for the evergreen PS2, however, with game sales falling from 23.2m in Q2 2008 to 11.1m.

PSP hardware sales fell from 3.2m to 3m, whilst PS2 suffered a steeper drop, with 1.9, units shifted – in the same period alst year Sony sold 2.5m of the machines.

Sony now expects its full year financial in March to bring a loss of YEN 95bn, which would be a marginal improvement on the YEN 98.9bn loss in 2008.

Poor PS2, Vaio and LCD TV sales were named as the worst offenders, though it had been hoped that the music sales resulting from the death of pop legend Michael Jackson would provide more of a financial boost than they eventually did.