14 DAY TRIAL // Video game publisher and hardware developer has published its financial results for the first fiscal quarter of this year and has noted that weaker than expected sales of the PlayStation 3 home console have led to its gaming business losing revenue.
Video game hardware, online services and software sales reached 1.5 billion dollars, which is a drop of 11.9 percent over the same period of last year.
Sales of the PS3 for the three months worldwide have reached 1.8 million units, which is a significant drop of 600,000 over the same three months of 2010.
The company says that 51.8 million PlayStation 3's have been sold since the console was initially launched.
PlayStation 2 sales continued their downward trend, going from 1.6 to 1.4 million units.
One bright spot in Sony's financial report is that the sales of video games for the PS3 managed to see an increase in order to reach a total of 26.1 million units.
Overall, Sony reported a net loss that has reached 15.5 billion Yen, which is the equivalent of 191 million dollars, a big drop when compared to last year when the profit reached 25.7 billion Yen.
Sony has singled out the tsunami and the earthquake in Japan as the biggest causes for its own problems and says that it plans to fully recover from their effects by the end of the year.
The hack attacks that took place in late April against the PlayStation Network have also caused some problems, but Sony says that the recovery has been quick.
The company stated, “Most recently, user logins to the PlayStation Network in North America have returned to a similar level as before the cyber attacks.”
Sony still believes that it will sell more PlayStation 3 home consoles during this year and it has done in 2010, which might mean that a price cut might happen before the end of the year to attract customers.