Following on the heels of Nintendo's quarterly earnings statement, Sony has posted its own quarterly results for April to June 2014. The news is mostly good, with a huge year-over-year jump from $30.3 million this quarter last year to $261.8 million this year. That's an improvement of more than eight times the company's profits from a year ago.
One of the biggest reasons Sony's fortunes have improved is the PlayStation 4. Combined with PS3 sales, which are dropping in favor of the new console, Sony sold 3.5 million PlayStation consoles this quarter. That's a 3x jump over last year's 1.1 million. The handheld PS Vita platform sold 750,000 units, up from 600,000 last year; not bad, but still minuscule in comparison to the handheld sales of the likes of Apple. Those combined hardware sales add up to $2.52 billion, an almost 200 percent increase from $1.29 billion last year. Sony's annual projection is that 17 million PlayStation consoles will be sold by the end of March 2015, along with 3.5 million PS Vitas.
Outside of the earnings report, a Sony representative told Game Informer recently that the company's online subscription service, PlayStation Plus, has more than doubled its membership numbers since the PS4's release. On the software side of things, Sony sold 85 million games. Last year, 68 million were sold. By the end of March next year, Sony hopes to have sold 390 million games.
Outside of the PlayStation division, Sony saw big gains from selling several buildings in Tokyo and the sale of game publisher Square Enix, which Sony owns stake in to the tune of 9.5 million shares. Sony also saw financial success with its summer blockbuster films "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" and "22 Jump Street," as well as music sales from the likes of Pharell Williams, John Legend and the late Michael Jackson.
Over the last seven years, Sony has lost money in six. Today's financial report indicates positive growth for the company, but despite all the financial improvements, Sony still expects a year-to-year loss of $488.4 million for 2014.
