PlayStation 3 Price Cut Blamed for Sony Quarterly Loss

Sony, the company which maintains the PlayStation brand of video game devices and a number of other electronics lines, has announced a loss of 2.09 billion dollars (1.642 million Euro), for the third fiscal quarter, which ended on December 31, and mentioned that the flooding in Thailand was to blame for the dip.

When it comes to revenue, the decline has been of 17.4 percent when compared to the same period of 2010, with the final figure coming in at 23.370 billion dollars (17.7 billion Euro).

The Consumer Products & Services division of Sony, where the Sony Computer Entertainment plays a big role, has also seen a serious decline in year-over-year revenue, of more than 24%, and listed a loss.

Sony says that the PlayStation 3 home gaming console was mostly to blame for the decline in business because the price cut enacted last year has hit revenue hard and the device has not been able to raise its unit numbers enough to compensate.

Sony is also presumably disappointed with the slow launch sale for the PlayStation Vita, which debuted in Japan in late December, but the full impact of the new hardware will be seen during the current fiscal quarter, when it is also set to arrive on market in North America and in Europe.

Overall, Sony was also hit by the floods in Thailand, which are blamed for disrupting both manufacturing and supply chains, and the weakening of the Yen also had a big impact on financial results.

For the fiscal year ending on March 31 Sony has raised expectations, saying that it now aims to get revenue of 7,181 billion Yen (94.3 billion dollars).

Sony has also announced that the position of Chief Executive Officer and President at the company will be occupied by Kaz Hirai, who is replacing Howard Stronger.

He revealed plans to focus the company on its video game related business and on the expansion of the smartphone division.