Nintendo's revenue up, Sony’s down

2008's earnings figures for Sony and Nintendo have been released, with reasonable profits shown for the DS manufacturer while the PlayStation brand experienced an overall decline.

Nintendo reported 9-month (April to December 2008) global sales of 1,536 billion Yen, an increase of nearly 17 per cent over the same period in 2007, while operating profits reached a 27 per cent annual increase to 501 billion Yen.

Sony’s operating figures for the games division saw a 32.2 per cent drop over 2007, however, with a revenue of 393.8 billion Yen.

DS hardware sales remained relatively consistent, with a 3 per cent increase in worldwide units sold to 31.5 million, though Sony’s ailing PSP system fell to just 5.08 million: 68,000 less than the previous year despite apparent renewed interest from the PSP-3000 hardware update.

Both companies suffered due to the appreciation of the Yen against the Euro, however, along with stagnant software sales - especially for the under-represented PSP.

Nintendo did manage to increase the number of games sold for the DS, though figures calculated over at Pocket Gamer show this to be something of a shallow victory.