Sony game sales slide

Sony posted its first full-year profit in five years during the latest quarter, but the company's game division wasn't a factor in the resurgence.

For the year ended March 31, Sony's Game sector saw revenue decrease 12.2 percent year-over-year to ¥707.1 billion ($7.2 billion). Sony attributed the downturn primarily to a dip in PlayStation 3, PSP, and PlayStation Vita hardware and software sales.

Operating income for Sony's Game sector fell ¥27.6 billion year-over-year to ¥1.7 billion ($17.2 million). This marked decrease was due to the aforementioned decrease in platform sales, as well as the impact of the February PS Vita price cut in Japan.

During the year, Sony sold 16.5 million combined PS3 and PS2 hardware units, compared to 18 million a year ago. The company moved 153.9 million software units for the platforms in the year, down from 164.5 million last year.

Turning to portables, Sony sold 7 million combined PSP and PS Vita units in the year, up from 6.8 million last year. Portable software sales hit 28.8 million copies this year, down from 32.2 million last year.

Looking ahead, Sony said it expects to sell an additional 10 million PS3 units in the coming year. The company gave no guidance for PS2 or PlayStation 4. Combined PSP and PS Vita sales in the coming year are expected to hit 5 million.

By comparison, Nintendo said last month that it expects to sell 18 million 3DS units in the coming year.

Overall, Sony posted a profit of ¥43 billion ($435.6 million) for the full year, better than the ¥456 billion ($4.6 billion) loss the company suffered last year. Revenue for the year hit ¥6.8 trillion ($72.3 billion), up 4.7 year-over-year.