Ok technically speaking Sony have made a profit before, but haven’t managed to make one in gaming in years! Ever since the company launched the PlayStation 3 in 2006, they’ve been losing money on it. However, since the redesign of the Playstation 3 back in August last year, things have taken a turn for the better.
Previously Sony were losing money on every single PlayStation 3 console sold. However in April it finally passed a milestone which made the PS3 profitable. This happened because advances in Technology made the console cheaper to produce and sales were higher than expected. That profitability has continued on through July to September. Sales of the PS3 were an impressive 3.5 million units, higher than the 3.2 million sold during the same quarter last year.
“The game business has been profitable for four quarters in a row and is steadily progressing to a profit for the full year,” said Masaru Kato
Sony managed to generate a profit of $375 million during it’s second quarter with revenue of $20.8 billion. $4.4 billion of that came from the division that includes both the PC and Playstation 3 consoles which saw an increase of 5 percent.
The increase in PC sales was caused from Sony expanding into more regions and increasing their market share. Even though game sales were down, strong sales of PlayStation 3 hardware and the arrival of the PlayStation Move towards the end of the quarter more than made up for them.
So it’s good to see Sony finally making a profit on their game console after 4 years of a losses. Fair play to them for sticking at it for this long, it must be hard when your shareholders are shouting at you for selling a product at a loss for 4 years to keep at it.