Sony games division down, though overall company profits rise

Sony’s PlayStation line continued to struggle through 2012 even though the overall numbers for the company were up.

Quarter 4 2012 saw a 15.1% drop in profits for the PlayStation brand with sales of the PS2 and PS3 hitting just 6.8 million units moved. That’s a number that’s down from 7.4 million in the same period for 2011. Not great.

Home console game and portable software sales also fell during the same period, but the news isn’t all bad in that latter department. Sales of the PSP (yes, really) and the PS Vita combined actually rose from 300 thousand units in 2011 to 2.7 million moved in Holiday 2012. So a bit of an oddity there with software sales falling but hardware sales up.

The somewhat happy news for the PlayStation Portable family of consoles still didn’t stop the tech giant from amending expectations yet again however. Just this past Spring, Sony forecasted a robust 16 million portables would move out the doors in fiscal 2012- that’s now been brutally slashed down to 7 million.

Now that’s a big drop.

I did say there was good news overall though and there is. Sony’s overall look got a lot rosier, climbing almost 7%. In the last three quarters of last year, the company saw sales come up 3.6%. That’s good to see and Sony would like nothing more than to keep that ball rolling, but that;ll be tricky with the possible announcement of the PS4 at the end of this month looming.

In the long run, the PS4 will hopefully help the company gain back a good deal of their share in the gaming market. It is however, unlikely to help out in the short term as gamers considering a PS3 will have to rethink that purchase in the face of an impending fourth console.

Yep, it’s transition time for Sony and just how that’ll go is anyone’s guess at the moment.

Source: MCV