Despite Healthy PS2 Sales, Sony Sees Mounting Losses

Despite healthy revenues from its game division in which sales doubled to 243 billion yen ($2 billion) compared to a year ago, Sony lost 13.2 billion yen ($111 million) for the quarter. During the same quarter last year, Sony showed a profit of 18.7 billion yen. Revenue rose almost 6%, to 1.8 trillion yen ($15 billion) from 1.7 trillion yen last year. Nullifying the gains from its game division were huge losses from Sony's poorly performing electronics division. Company executives said that the demand for PCs and televisions was down in Japan, demand for video cameras was down in the U.S., and demand for PCs and displays was down in Europe. Those factors, combined with downward pressure on prices, savaged the Sony electronics group. The division posted an operating loss of 24.9 billion yen ($209 million). Sony said that it shipped a total of 4.6 million PS2 consoles worldwide during the quarter, and that a total of 19.6 million consoles had been shipped thus far since its launch last year. Due to its poor results, the company said it will cut another 4,600 jobs by the end of this fiscal year. That figure, combined with earlier job cuts, brings the company's total staff reduction for the year to 21,000 -- 11% of its entire worldwide staff.