Sony´s losses increase due to PS3, say analysts

Sony Corp. may soon be forced to admit to its biggest quarterly loss in four years, due to the underperformance of the PlayStation3. This information comes from Bloomberg financial services who surveyed a number of analysts.

PlayStation 3 is being outsold by Wii by about two to one, causing Sony's game division, its second-largest by revenue, to post a fourth-quarter loss of 121 billion yen and a record 245 billion yen deficit for the fiscal year, according to five of the 11 analysts.

The loss may exceed profits from electronics such as Bravia televisions, and the movie unit, whose ``Spider-Man 3'' generated record box-office sales when it opened this month.

According to the article, Sony is due to make its earnings public tomorrow, which is why the company declined to comment.

SCEA president Jack Tretton only recently tried to shrug off the PS3´s bad start, though, speaking to the Los Angeles Times (registration required).

We didn't get into PS3 for the first six months of 2007 — we're into this for the next 10 years and beyond. (...) A million units one way or another at this point isn't going to worry us.

Stock market reaction

As you might have guessed, the stock market reacted promptly. Shares in Sony Corp. are down almost 2,2 percent, while Nintendo Co. Ltd. shares climb almost 2,4 percent (as traded in Frankfurt).

Open letter to MaxConsole

One more thing. Unfortunately, I have another bone to pick with the hopelessly unreliable news site MaxConsole, who alerted me to this story. In the past, they simply posted other people´s lies. Now they moved on to spreading their own.

While it is not the most important aspect of their article on the topic, they call Bloomberg Limited Partnership "german financial analysts". So the company´s founder is German? You got me there. I thought he was from Massachusetts and was now stuck in some dead-end job in New York City.

Dear MaxConsole editor Malloc (yup, there seems to be only one). Your nickname is based on a programming term, it seems. So I assume that your background is not in journalism and perhaps not even in writing, in general. Also, you appear to be Dutch. If so, help yourself to that non-native bonus.

Consequently, I forgive you all your spelling mistakes - although two in a few lines regarding advertising inquiries is a bit of a stretch (as well as slightly counter-productive, I guess). But let us not bicker about what the PlayStation´s popular karaoke game is called or who is president of ´Silicon Knights´. Those are just amusing errors, probably owing to you going trigger-happy on that publish button.

But, returning to the matter in hand, misinformation is another ballgame. In this day and age, reasonably reliable info is only one mouse-click away. This is the least fact-checking that you must do. I guess you no longer have to go out of your way and implement the journalistic credo of old, checking three separate and independent sources.

And remember when journalists had to chase those up without the use of cellphones and the internet? Of course, you do not. But spare a thought for those poor souls back then and head on over to Wikipedia once in a while, for pity´s sake.

Sources: Bloomberg, L.A. Times (registration required)
Thanks to: MaxConsole