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Slowing PS2 Dents Sony Profits

Posted by simoniker on from the only-a-scratch dept.

Thanks to BBC News for their article discussing the fall in Sony's quarterly profit by 25 percent, blamed partially on "feeble sales in many products - most notably games hardware." The article points out: "Sony's game division, which produces both hardware and software for games, saw its sales fall to 161bn yen in the third quarter, from 250bn yen a year earlier", and a Reuters article adds analysis, pointing out the 91 percent operating profit reduction was partly down to "...additional research and development cost for next-generation microchips", as Sony ramp up R+D for the PlayStation 3. But although an analyst commented that "...the game division was hit harder than we had anticipated", the company will still be making a nearly $1 billion overall profit for the year, with PS2 by far the most popular, currently best-selling worldwide console.

3 of 34 comments (clear)

  1. uh huh suuuure by nocomment · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That had nothing to do with Nintendo's price drop huh? I'm not buying into it.

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  2. Not surprising... by Bagels · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sony's pretty much saturated the market - everyone who wanted to buy a PS2 has had ample opportunity to do so by now, so the attention is now starting to shift towards second consoles like the GCN and XBOX.

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  3. Re:"Refurbished" PS2s.. by Spleener12 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I think this is just an early sign of Sony feeling the heat from Microsoft and Nintendo. The only way you can ignore Microsoft and Nintendo as a factor in this case would be either,

    Considering the fact that Sony is still in the lead by a metric fuckload, I don't think "feeling the heat" is the right word here. But Sony is definetly not as dominant in this generation as they were last time. Back then, you had the N64 which had a handful of good first party titles and the PS1 had everything else.

    Now we have the GC which, while still mostly relying on good first-party titles, has a lot more of them this time around, the XBox which has a few good exclusives (Halo, KOTOR) and the advantage of online play (yes, PS2 and GC have it too, but the XBox comes with a hard drive and modem, whereas you need to buy those add-ons with the others,) and the PS2, which has, well, everything else. It's two "B" systems and one "A" system as opposed to one "A" system and one "C" system.

    So, yeah. Sony's still winning by a landslide, it's just a much smaller one.