Sony's Playstation 3 has begun to make a profit after increased sales and cheaper manufacturing costs for the PS3 Slim. Until recently, the PS3 was failing to make money after its November 2006 release due to slow consumer adoption along with high development and manufacturing costs.
PCWorld reports that after a 2 million unit boost of sales in the last three months of 2009, compared to the same period of 2008, the console's outlook was starting to turn around. During these three months the console sold 6.5 million units and became profitable for Sony, however, this was too late in the year to prevent a $540 million loss for the gaming company. Sony's good news has continued through the first three months of 2010 with 2.2 million units sold, up 600,000 units from the same period in 2009.
The news can be seen as a milestone for the new management team which took over in April 2009 who made profitability a major short-term goal for the company. Sony's chief financial officer, Nobuyuki Oneda, said the game business achieved a profit because of "strong sales of first-party software and the elimination of negative margins on the PS3".
"For this year we expect to be able to generate at least double-digit profits," he continued. In Sony's last fiscal year they sold 13 million consoles and this year hope to sell 15 million. Each console sold will now become a large part of Sony's hopes for continued profitability.
Sony is also looking towards further profitability from online movies, music videos, and comics as it add to its online Playstation Store; the upcoming free firmware update for the console will also introduce 3D capabilities.
Playstation Move and Playstation Eye will be released later in the year and they are seen as Sony's competitors to Xbox 360's yet to be released Natal and Wii's motion sensing abilities. These two new features can sense and estimate movement and acceleration thanks to a new controller along with image recognition from the Eye camera.
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