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Wii and PS3 sales slide

Nintendo's profits slip as Sony drops into the red

Sales of Nintendo’s Wii and Sony’s PlayStation 3 have experienced sharp declines during the last three months, both firms’ first quarter financial reports have revealed.

Nintendo sold just 2.23m Wii units worldwide during its first financial quarter, ended 30 June. The Japanese gaming giant shifted 5.17m Wiis during the same period last year.

PS3 sales during Sony’s first financial quarter – also ended 30 June – totalled 1.1m units, compared to 1.6m units during the same period in 2008. PlayStation Portable sales also dropped from 3.7m to 1.3m units during the respective quarters, Sony admitted.

Remarkably, Sony’s aging PS2 – the slimmed down version of which was unveiled back in 2004 – actually sold 1.6m units during the quarter, a far greater number than the flagship PS3 achieved.

Sony’s kept pretty quiet about reasons for the hardware declines, perhaps because the entire company recorded an operating loss of ¥25.7bn (£162m/$268m/€190m) during the three month period – down from the whopping ¥73.4bn in profit it made during the same period last year.

Nintendo, on the other hand, has admitted that “slowing demand for its Wii console” contributed to its overall 60.6 per cent drop in net profit – down from ¥107.3bn (£682m/$1.1bn/€800m) in Q1 ’08 to ¥42.3bn during Q1 ’09. ®

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