Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo: The numbers game

Given the heated (*cough*flaming*cough*) debates we’ve been hearing over the ongoing console wars, we thought it’d be a good time to start taking a more careful look at the financial reports from each of the three companies that have been at the center of these discussions.

Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have recently released their financial report for the third quarter of this year, and from what we can see, it begins to shed light on their recent problems, delays and movements with regards to their upcoming consoles – the  figures. First up, we have Sony:

• Earnings dropped by 94% for the past quarters, due mostly to their laptop battery problems, leaving them with total earnings of $14.4 million.
• They’ve experienced a total loss of $369 million due to PS3 startup costs in the past few months.
• Their game revenues are down by 20%, leaving them with total of %1.4 billion in revenues. This was caused by the decreasing sales of PS2 and PSP units, along with the recent PS2 price cut.
• They’ve sold a total of 5 million PS2’s and 3.89 million PSP’s in this quarter.
• They currently hold a balance of 4.7 billion, with an additional $3 billion from debts.

Microsoft and Nintendo are next after this jump!

Given the heated (*cough*flaming*cough*) debates we’ve been hearing over the ongoing console wars, we thought it’d be a good time to start taking a more careful look at the financial reports from each of the three companies that have been at the center of these discussions.

Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have recently released their financial report for the third quarter of this year, and from what we can see, it begins to shed light on their recent problems, delays and movements with regards to their upcoming consoles – the  figures. First up, we have Sony:

• Earnings dropped by 94% for the past quarters, due mostly to their laptop battery problems, leaving them with total earnings of $14.4 million.
• They’ve experienced a total loss of $369 million due to PS3 startup costs in the past few months.
• Their game revenues are down by 20%, leaving them with total of %1.4 billion in revenues. This was caused by the decreasing sales of PS2 and PSP units, along with the recent PS2 price cut.
• They’ve sold a total of 5 million PS2’s and 3.89 million PSP’s in this quarter.
• They currently hold a balance of 4.7 billion, with an additional $3 billion from debts.

Next, Microsoft:

• Their Games and Entertainment division had a 70% increase in profits last quarter, boosting it up to $1.03 billion in total profits.
• In connection with this, said division now cuts down its $173 million deficit to just $96 million. Microsoft plans to make this  division profitable by June 30 next year.
• Microsoft  currently has four million XBLA subscribers around the world, with plans for them to hit the six million mark by June 30.
• They also plan to have 160 games for the XBox 360 by the end of the year.
• They’ve calculated that per console, there’s 2.9 accessories and 5.1 games available.
• They’ve currently sold 6 million Xbox 360’s worldwide (3.5 in North America, 1.7 in Europe, 700k around the world). This falls short of their forecasted 10 million units sold by the time the PS3 launches on November 17.
• They plan to have  sold a total of 15-17 million Xbox 360’s by June 30, next year.

Last (but not least) we have Nintendo taking the panel:

• They sold 10 million Nintendo DS, and DS Lites in the past six months, totalling 26.8 million units since its initial release in 2004.
• Their new Super Mario Brothers title sold 6.7 million copies worldwide last quarter.
• Nine of their DS titles sold more than one million units worldwide in the last quarter.
• Nintendo expects to sell four million Wii units by January, and a further two million by March 31 worldwide.
• They expect to sell 17 million Wii games by March 31.
• They’ve had a sales profit of $2.5 billion in this quarter – a 69% increase from last year.
• Their current net income is at $450.6 million.
• They’re expecting a total of $6.2 billion for sales and $845 million in profits by March 31.
• They’ve increased their DS prediction from 17 to 20 million units sold worldwide within this year.
• They’ve upped their original forecast of 2.5 million sold GBA‘s to 3.3 million for this year.

We  thought you guys might want to read this over – it explains some of the recent movements that  these three major corporation are going through, from recent legal actions to opinions regarding their competitors.

Via Mercury News