Sony in Profit but PSP Sales Halved - PS3 Slightly Up

Sony's portable games machine, the Playstation Portable, has experienced a decline of approximately 50% in sales this year it can be revealed in the three months to September 30th 2010. While the PS3 saw unit sales rising slightly year-on-year.

The news comes via Sony's own Second Financial Quarter report (see section 13). The 3-million sales of the PSP in the three months to September 30th 2009 were halved to 1.5-million in the same period this year.

On the good news front, PS3 sales for 2010 Q2 sales rose from 3.2m units in the same period in the previous year to 3.5million units.

For even greater contrast the Playstation 2 equalled the PSP sales for the period - despite seeing a drop ni sales itself compared to Q2 2009. Not a good sign when a 10-year old console is beating your primary portable games machine in the market.

The company as a whole, however, performed well for the period showing overall income up to 68.7-billion yen compared to a loss of 32.6b in the same period the previous year.

Of this, operating income for the Networked Products and Services group (AKA The PlayStation Dept) was up from 351.7b Yen in 2009 to 369.1b in the three months to September 20th 2010.

Source: Sony's Investor Relations Q2 2010 report