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Sony posts $887 million net profit, PlayStation has strong holiday quarter

Sony had quite a good holiday during its third quarter for fiscal year 2010, posting a ¥137.5 billion (approximately US $1.68b) operating income. Year-over-year, however, it's actually six percent lower than Q3 FY09, with some blame attributable to a five percent stronger yen. Although sales were more or less the same in most divisions (with pictures and music seeing a more noticeable drop), operating income saw dramatic changes. Consumer, Professional and Devices dropped 47 percent to ¥26.8b ($327.3m), while Networked Products and Services (which includes the PlayStation brand) jumped a whopping 134 percent to ¥45.7b ($559.78).

Looking at unit sales, Bravia sets were way up (7.9m units versus 5.4m in Q3 FY09), and video cameras, compact digital cameras, and PCs all saw moderate gains. PSP hardware took a pretty big hit, going from 4.2m last holiday to 3.6m this past quarter (the now-profitable PlayStation 3 saw a slight decline, 6.5m to 6.3m). Software-wise, though, both gaming machines saw a bump -- 57.6m (from 47.6m) for PS3 and 16.4m (from 15m) for PSP. The PlayStation 2, now almost 11 years old, actually had about the same 2.1m hardware unit sales YOY, though software took a pretty hard hit (from 11.2m to 5.3m). Sony's golden years console isn't going down without a fight -- then again, it might've been a different story had the company managed to add backwards compatibility to the PS3.