PlayStation Slides Down Financial Chute News

Sony Corporation has today published its financial performance during the third quarter of the current fiscal year, which ran from October 1st to December 31st 2008.

Announcing an operating loss of 18 billion Yen (£140 million), down from an operating income of over 230 billion Yen (£1.79 billion) year-on-year, the Corporation blamed several key factors, including an appreciation of the Yen, the current global financial crisis, and intensified price competition.

Things aren't looking great for the Corporation's Games sector either, as Sony confirmed a massive deterioration in the operating income of Sony Computer Entertainment for the quarter, down a massive 97% on the same period last year.  SCE recorded an operating of just 400 million Yen (£3.1 million) for the three-month period, together with a drop in sales of nearly a third.  Despite blaming the current issue on the state of Japanese exports (which is attributed to the current appreciation of the Yen), SCE also acknowledged that there had been a drop in sales across the PlayStation family of platforms, including a massive slump in PS2 sales of over 2.5 million units compared to the same period in the last fiscal year, and a drop in global PS3 sales of over 400,000 units to 4.46 million.

Sony's third quarter performance comes just a week after the Corporation lowered its forecast for the full fiscal year, where the electronics giant expects to record an operating loss of 260 billion Yen (£2.02 billion).