Sony Expects Gaming Sales to Decrease - Blames Portables

Refuses to detail PSP and Vita sales as individual items though

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Sony Expects Gaming Sales to Decrease - Blames Portables
Sony has laid out its financials for the quarter ending June 30th. Things are not good. The Games division (now reported as a standalone) contributed, as analysts say, a loss.

In terms of hardware sales the figures (as you can see from this slide buried in the webcast presentation) Sony has decided to bunch PS3 and PS2 together and to do the same with Vita and old school PSP. This results in the following:

Quarter 1 2011 sales of 'Computer Entertainment System' (PS2/PS3) were 3.2 million. This time around there was a drop to 2.8 million.

Quarter 1 2011 sales of 'Portable Entertainment System' (PS Vita and PSP) were 1.8 million in Q1 2011 compared with 1.4 million this time.

Bear in mind that PS Vita launched in Japan in December 2011. Therefore it would not have appeared in the first quarter (ending June 30th 2011). Therefore PSP itself sold more in Q1 2011 than PSP and Vita combined did in Q1 2012.

In terms of cash money, the finance report for this first quarter period states about the Games Division that: "Sales decreased 14.5% year-on-year (a 10% decrease on a constant currency basis) to 118.0 billion yen (1,493 million U.S. dollars).

"This decrease was primarily due to lower sales of hardware and software of the PSP® (PlayStation Portable) and PlayStation®3, partially offset by the contribution of the PlayStation®Vita introduced from December 2011."

In terms of those sales, "Operating loss of 3.5 billion yen (45 million U.S. dollars) was recorded, compared to operating income of 4.1 billion yen in the same quarter of the previous fiscal year, due to the impact of the above-mentioned decrease in sales and unfavorable foreign exchange rates. Operating results during the current quarter included a benefit due to the reversal of a Blu-ray Disc."

Now all this is bad, but then Sony talks about Outlook for the Fiscal Year ending March 31, 2013 for its Games division:

"Primarily due to the lowering of the annual unit sales forecast for portable hardware, sales are expected to be significantly lower than the May forecast. Due to the above-mentioned decrease in sales and the impact of unfavorable exchange rates, operating income is expected to be significantly below the May forecast. Sales are expected to be essentially flat and operating income is expected to decrease significantly year-on-year."

More on the Sony financials here.
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