Sony loses big bucks

Sony shared today its earnings report for the year ending March 31, 2009. The strong yen and a slipping PlayStation 2 business affected the company's sales and profits for the year.

Total sales for Sony Group as a whole were 7,730 billion yen, 12.9% down from last year. The company posted an operating loss of 227.8 billion yen and overall net loss of 98.9 billion yen.

The major culprit in the company's losses was the electronics divisions, which posted a 168.1 billion yen operating loss, but games and financial services also saw losses. Foreign exchange rate losses resulted in about 279 billion yen in operating income losses, according to the company.

For its games business, sales were down 18% to 1,053.1 billion yen. Operating losses for this division decreased from last year's 66.1 billion yen to 58.5 billion yen.

The company blamed both the foreign exchange rate and decreased PlayStation 2 business as reason for its game division losses. For the decreased operating loss, the company pointed to increased sales of PS3 software and PS3 hardware cost reductions.

PS3 and PSP saw increased hardware sales, rising respectively 10% to 10.06 million units and 2% to 14.11 million units. PS2, on the other hand, took quite a hit. Hardware sales dropped 42% to 7.91 million units.

In software, PS3 saw a massive increase of 79% to 103.7 million units PSP fell 9% to 50.3 million units. PS2 fell 46% to 83.5 million units.

Sony also shared forecasts for the coming year. While it expects lowered losses from its PS3 business as more software becomes available for the system, it expects continued losses overall due to continued PS2 drops and exchange rate issues.

Hardware sales for the coming year call for 13 million PS3 units, 15 million PSP units, and 5 million PS2 units. For package software, the company expects total sales of 240 million units across PS2, PS3 and PSP. While this would about level with last year, the company also expects network-based sales to rise three times to approximately 50 billion yen.

You can see some colorful English language slides from Sony's earnings presentation at the company's investors relation page.