Sony sold 13.9 million PS3 consoles in the last financial year, down from 14.3 million in the previous year.
Other PlayStation platforms dropped too: PSP dropped from 8m consoles to 6.8m, and PS2 from 6.4m to 4.1m. Sony has not released any sales figures for PS Vita yet, a little worrying considering it launched in Japan late last year.
PS3 software sales took a positive bump though, up from 147.9m to 156.6m. Over one-third of those sales came in the lucrative Christmas period, with 66.2m games sold in Q3 alone, up from 57.6m the previous year.
Overall, Sony's Consumer Products and Services division — which includes PlayStation, PCs, digital cameras and LCD TVs — posted an operating loss of ¥229.8 billion ($2.88bn or £1.78bn). Sony cites the impact of the Japan earthquake and ensuing floods, plus reduced PS3 hardware profit due to a "strategic price reduction" and lower PS2 sales due to platform migration, as primary reasons for the loss.
While Sony expects home console sales to drop off again next year, it's hoping Vita will more than make up the slack, predicting 16m combined sales of PSP and PS Vita hardware. Considering PSP dipped to 6.8m sales this past year, Sony is clearly targeting at least 10m Vita sales before April 2013. If it wants to hit that target, it'll need to bring out some pretty big guns at E3 in June.
[source sony.net]
Comments 1
The PS3's starting to be pretty consistent now. Even though it dipped a bit, the software figures are really good. And I expect they'll hit similar numbers again next year if they drop the price down to $199 (which I think we're all predicting).
Vita situation is concerning, but it's still far too early to make any deeper observations.
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