Per The Economist’s “Business this week” but verifiable elsewhere.
Fascinating. The video game industry is about to go kerplop.
Define “kerplop”. :)
And I think you meant to say the videogame industry is DOOMED!
Anyone have a recollection how the business was doing the last time all of the current gen consoles were getting long in the tooth? Is Sony suffering the ill effects of a bloated market with too much product (something that, arguably, Nintendo and MS don’t face with fewer titles)? Are people buying PS2’s but not picking up any of Sony’s first party titles? Is each PS2 hardware sale still a loss leader?
Video games are DOMED!!!1!!
-Tom
P.S. Seriously, though, ouch for Sony.
PC game market share is down, Playstation making a loss and the X-Box doesn’t even know what a profit looks like. At this rate all we’ll left to do at QT3 is to take the piss out of the Daily Mail.
I wonder how much of this deficit can be attributed to the development & manufacturing of the PSP?
If Sony isn’t making money, that’s a really scary thing for the game biz.
-Scott-
I think it’s possible that the PS2 is simply right at the edge of its lifespan, and we all pretty much know that the PC market is an unmitigated mess. Doesn’t seem fair to take the XBox into account like that though. Would’ve been a geniune miracle to turn a profit off of a first entry into the console world that had to compete with both Sony AND Nintendo. It’s a good enough sign for Microsoft that the XBox even survived this long, even if it did launch to sea on a boat made of money.
Actually Jon I was just summarising the gist of recent threads with my tongue in my cheek. I don’t read the Economist so I don’t know the facts about Sony’s losses, but they do have their fingers in more pies than just consoles, it could be that their hi-fi equpment is causing the problem and Playstation 2s are still selling well, for instance.
Edit: Whoops I should read the title of the post, Do we have a dummy emoticon?
Sony incurs operating loss this quarter in video games
OMG!!! SONY is going to become a 3rd party developer!!!
-AM Urbanek
[size=1]brought to you by lessons I have learned on the internet[/size]
Sony’s other divisions are also doing poorly, FWIW.
XBOX FOREVER.
That is all. ;-) Although I completely understand that it is the reality of business, I still am pissed off at Sony and will probably not buy any of their consoles after they pushed Sega out of the market. The old glory days of SNES vs. Genesis…
Sega pushed Sega out of the market.
Meanwhile, profits nearly double at Nintendo. Huh.
After shopping around for a new digital camera, I’m suprised Sony makes any money in that field. Their cameras seemed to consistently offer the least amount of options for the highest price. Either that or most stores mark Sony cameras up more than everything else.
After selling more console units than the others for so long, I’m not surprised that harware sales aren’t pushing profits anymore. Add-on hardware really hasn’t accounted for much, either. The network-adaptor is “meh” and the hard-drive never really went anywhere either. I’m not sure on what the EyeToy numbers did, though new games coming out might help.
As for games themselves, did Sony even really have any big titles out this past quarter? I don’t know, I haven’t really been paying attention, but it seems like the last few months have been rather dry.
Too many games being held back for christmas sales, I sometimes think.
I’m pretty sure R&D for PSP and the Cell stuff for PS3 is probably a good portion of that loss.
From a publisher standpoint Sony hasn’t had anything on the order of GT3 for a long while but Jak 2, Ratchet & Clank 2, and Socom 2 all did very well over the holiday season.