Increasing PS3 Sales, Strong PSP Helped Sony Narrow Losses In FY08

Sony's game division saw sales go up 26.3 percent in fiscal 2008 to 267.5 billion yen ($2.5 billion), and while the company still took an operating loss of 124.5 billion yen ($1.2 billion), that's close to half of what it was in 2007.

The company also said its Japanese sales "decreased slightly," while sales rose in North America and Europe.

We've already reported Sony's unit sales by platform today, and we also took a peek inside the company's losses throughout PlayStation 3's bumpy start, but now we've also learned that Sony's actually closed some of that gap in its cost-of-sales to sales ratio (how much it costs to make a product versus how much the product earns.)

Though, as we reported earlier, Sony took a hit because the PS3 still costs more to make than they recoup at its current price point, the company says that its price reductions were "successful," in that "a significant increase" in PS3 sales ultimately cut 2007's losses nearly in half over the course of the year. The resulting broader userbase in turn drove software sales, which also helped. Sony says it also benefited from reducing its advertising and marketing expenses.

Finally, Sony credited strong PSP performance buoyed by the success of the slim and lite model for helping reduce losses in its game business segment.

http://kotaku.com/5018944/increasing...losses-in-fy08