Sony Lowers Financial Forecasts

Sony has released the final forecasts for their finances for the fiscal year of 2006. Despite the fact the PS3 has been recieving better and better press across the board and impressing critics everywhere, including us their problems don't seem to be about to stop, with a steady flow of negative press being published still and now shareholders being delivered this bad news.

The company announced they expect revenues of 8.23 trillion Yen (around 69bn dollars), which sounds quite impressive on it's own, but they have in fact lowered their Group operating profit margin by 62% to 50 million yen ($424mil), while their net profit projection drops 38% to 80 billion yen ($627mil).

Before fanboys everywhere cry that this is and isn't the fault of the PS3, depending what side they're on, it should be noted that the Laptop Battery Recall is by far the biggest Sony disaster of the year, and Sony forecasts this will cause a loss of around 50 million yen.

Meanwhile, in the area we're interested in - games - Sony expects profits to drop by 60 million Yen - just over $500 million. The company has given two particular reasons for the drop in profits - problems getting the PS3 to market, and poor sales of the PSP and PS2 consoles this past year. In an interesting fact, the inclusion of HDMI in all versions of the next Playstation cost them another $135 million.

Finally, in the area of electronics Sony sees another drop - 33 billion yen (280 million) from earlier projected profits.

While this may all seem a bit grim, Sony's forecast also makes it clear they expect to be raking in money hand over fist in the fiscal year of 2007.