Sony smashed by sales slump

Sony’s game sales are way down according to the newly released Q3 financial report, which could spell trouble for the technology giant.

This could be a major concern for Sony, a company that usually performs strongly in its gaming division and struggles in other areas – against huge competitors like Apple and Samsung, gaming was Sony’s point of difference.

It must be remembered that the PSP and PS3 have all but reached the end of their life-spans, so a sales drop of 15.1 per cent over the last year is perhaps a little more understandable given most buyers will wait until the next-generation consoles launch before buying new gaming gear.

“Overall segment sales decreased significantly due to lower sales of hardware and software of the PS3 and PSP, partially offset by the sales of the Playstation Vita introduced in December 2011,” reads the report.

In keeping with this new development, forecasts for Sony’s games division have also been slashed.

Despite the poor figures, overall Sony appears to be recovering from last year’s financial horror story which saw them post losses of around the $6bn USD mark.

There’s still a deficit this year of some $650 million, but we’ll call that an improvement and leave it there.

What is clear is that Sony is relying on their next console to break this trend – and it looks as though we’ll be hearing more about that console in a release of new information dated February 20.