Sony profits sink, game division floats by

With the celebratory horn tooting out of the way, let's turn to Sony's overall quartely results -- a tune, you'll find, that's distinctly grim. A 72 percent plunge in net profit and a 16-year-low share value sum up the voyage through the current economic storm. Still, the game division has posted a 10 percent rise in profit and narrowed its loss from ¥96.7 billion to ¥39.5 billion ($379 million), as PlayStation 3 hardware and software sales proved incredibly buoyant. Indeed, PS3 hardware sales totaled 2.43 million units worldwide over the quarter (besting Xbox 360 sales), as reported earlier.

More impressive, though, PS3 software sales nearly doubled in the quarter, reaching 21.1 million units. While PlayStation 2 sales were actually greater than PS3 sales in the hardware (2.5 million units) and software (23.1 million units) categories, the platform actually saw decreases of 0.78 million and 14.9 million units, respectively. The PSP business also saw a lull in software sales (um, and releases), down 0.8 million units, but still managed to move 3.18 million hardware units into eager, sweaty palms -- hang tight, the games are coming next year! Overall, however, SCE continues to post losses, and, like the rest of the company, is crippled by the weak value of the yen against the dollar and euro.