Sales of the Playstation3 have fallen well short of expectations in the critical Japanese market Research firm Enterbrain says that Sony (SNE) sold a little over 534,000 PS3 units from its November 11 launch to January 7. Sony had hoped to sell one million units in Japan during 2006.
Sales of the Nintendo Wii, which came out December reached 1.14 million units through January 7.
Big problems with the PS3 would spell big problems for Sony. In the September 2006 quarter, game sales were $1.44 billion of Sony’s total $15.71 billion in revenue. But in fiscal 2005, operating income from the game division was nearly 40% of the company’s total, despite its relatively small percentage of total revenue.
Opererating profit at Sony’s studios and consumer electronics business are unlikely to take up the slack, so Sony could be headed for real trouble.
Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.
Top Gaining Stocks
Top Losing Stocks