Sony has reshaped itself to target expansion in lucrative areas such as videogames, entertainment and camera sensors, and not to pursue sales growth in areas such as smartphones where price competition with Asian rivals is acute.
Advertisement
Financial reports and other business-related fine details are considered the boring side of video games – but they can hide some pretty interesting news. It also estimated the April quake’s impact on overall business at 80 billion yen, less than its initial forecast of 115 billion yen.
Sony on Friday cut its sales forecast for the current fiscal year, citing the impact of a surging yen and slower smartphone sales, as net profit also took a hit. Net income dropped to 21.2 billion yen ($205 million), a 74.3-percent reduction.
The guide also stated that there is a Cinematic mode which will allow users to view PlayStation 4 content in virtual reality like videos and other games not specifically built for the PlayStation VR.
VentureBeat has a breakout of Sony’s first fiscal quarter and it’s fairly jaw-dropping. The image-sensor unit recorded a ¥ 43.5 billion operating loss in the quarter.
Sony’s Game & Network Services division absolutely killed it in their recently released quarterly earnings report, which details financial results from April 1st to June 30th. It expects to sell 20 million PS4 gaming consoles as against 17.7 million units in the previous year.
“They’re releasing more software and the time is now to harvest profits”, said Hiroyasu Nishikawa, an analyst at Iwai Cosmo Securities Co.
First of all, users of the PlayStation VR headset must be at least 12 years old. “And by prolonging the life of the PS4, profits should grow”.
The revenue increase at the Pictures Division was largely driven by the theatrical success of “The Angry Birds Movie” and higher TV advertising revenues in India and Latin America. But after being responsible for a $544 million loss in the last financial year, the unit posted a slender 400 million yen ($4 million) operating profit for the quarter.
Advertisement
At the Mobile division, sales fell 33.7 percent to JPY 185.9 billion, which Sony blamed on lower smartphone sales in the mid-range segment as well as a withdrawal from some unprofitable countries.
