Sony Corp. posts financial results for its fiscal year ending March 31st 2008, and enjoys a 6.9 percent increase in sales to ¥8.87 trillion ($84.4 billion USD) compared to the previous year.  Profitability also got a much appreciated boost as the company's net income tripled to ¥369.4 billion ($3.51 billion USD).  Strong consumer electronics sales, particularly from the Bravia LCD television, VAIO PC and Cyber-shot digital camera product lines, provided the backbone for Sony Corp.'s profits.  Sales from its motion picture division decreased 11.2 percent due to a lower number of films released this past financial year.  Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) meawhile painted a rosier portrait thanks to shrinking losses stemming from PlayStation 3 production as well as booming PlayStation Portable sales in Japan.

SCE itself saw an increase in sales of 26.3 percent to ¥1.28 trillion ($12.2 billion USD), though profitability still proved elusive thanks to an ¥124.5 billion ($1.18 billion USD) operating loss.  This is nevertheless a marked improvement from the ¥232.3 billion ($2.21 billion USD) hit taken by the division last financial year.

The PlayStation Portable proved to be the biggest winner for SCE with sales of 13.9 million units during fiscal year 2008, up 4.36 million from the previous year.  PSP software sales also grew to 55.5 million units.

Sony's ever-stalwart PlayStation 2 didn't let up one bit even given its age, selling 13.73 million units across twelve months.  This is actually a 980,000 unit decrease from the previous fiscal year, but the tally is certainly impressive enough to earn it second place over its PS3 big brother.  The PS2 remained king in terms of software despite suffering a slight drop, garnering a whopping 154 million units in sales.

The PlayStation 3 console was at the tail end of SCE's console trio, with sales of 9.24 million consoles.  However, this is still an increase from fiscal year 2007 by 5.63 million units.  PS3 software sales similiarly jumped to 57.9 million units from 44.6 million.  SCE head Kaz Hirai himself recently lamented the PS3's growing pains during its first year in the market thanks to confusion amidst third party developers over what Sony itself wanted the machine to be.  The outlook apparently began changing for the better when SCE better positioned the PS3 as a *gasp!* games console, as opposed to HAL 9000's kid brother.  This continued emphasis on gamers can also be seen in the recent delay of Home, the anticipated social networking platform for the PlayStation Network.  Sony pushed back Home's launch in order to better accomodate a focus for gamers over corporate sponsors.

Forecasting the upcoming 2009 financial year, SCE expects another decrease in sales thanks to a gradual decline of the PS2's presence from the market.  However, profitability can only get better as the PS3 continues to benefit from hardware cost reductions and an improving library of games.