PlayStation sales decline (CVG 29/1/09)

Sony's released it's third quarter financial report, which covers the three months ending December 2008 - and it's pretty unpleasant reading for PlayStation.

Over the three month Q3 period (which covers Christmas) Sony's games division is down 32 percent in revenue from last year, racking in 393 billion (£3bn) compared to last year's 581 billion (£4.5bn).

PlayStation 3 sales dropped 440,000 to 4.46 million sold, while PSP sales declined by 680,000 to 5.08m and PS2 by 2.88 million to reach 2.52m for the year. In comparison, Microsoft reported it's best ever Christmas for Xbox 360 sales.

Sony accredited the slumped hardware sales down to "the impact of the appreciation of the yen against the US dollar and the Euro, in addition to decrease of unit sales of PS2, PSP and PS3".

Software sales saw similar slumps on PSP and PS2, the former dropping off 2.8m in games sales to 15.5m, and the latter more than halving its units with a decrease of 32 million to 29 software units sold.

It's not necessarily all bad news for Sony though, which hopes to finally evolve the PS3 into a profitable business in 2009 - a feat that the entire Xbox business only achieved last year.

Keep in mind that these are only revenue numbers as well - not profit.

haha i hope they go bust nxt year

if they do ............they do..........awh well.............i guess ill buy a couple of xbox's............they should keep me going for a couple of days.......until they all..........have their red ring funerals............