PlayStation 4

TOKYO (Dow Jones)–Sony Corp. (6758.TO) posted a sharp increase in net profit in the October-December quarter and narrowed its full-year loss forecast as the benefits of restructuring measures took hold and sales of its PlayStation 3 surged following a price cut.

Fortified by a 44% jump in PlayStation 3 game console sales, Sony said Thursday net profit in its fiscal third quarter was Y79.2 billion, compared with a Y10.4 billion profit in the same period a year earlier. It was better than a mean estimate for a profit of Y33.73 billion by analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. Revenue rose 3.9% to Y2.24 trillion.

Sony is still clawing out from the trough of a global economic downturn that crippled the company’s electronics business. It closed 18% of its plants, eliminated 20,000 jobs and overhauled its supply chain to reduce its costs by Y330 billion. At the same time, it is trying to reinvigorate its products by allowing them to link to online content and services.

“We think we’ve bottomed out,” Nobuyuki Oneda, Sony’s chief financial officer, said at a briefing with reporters.

An analyst at a Tokyo brokerage, who declined to be identified before taking a closer look at the figures, said Sony’s results appear to be improving and that they show signs of restructuring progress. But he questioned how big a chunk of restructuring charges is being deferred to Sony’s fiscal fourth quarter through March.

There are signs of recovering demand across the electronics industry. South Korea’s Samsung Electronics said on Friday that it returned to profit in the last three months of 2009 thanks to profitability improvements at its chip business, and Sharp Corp. also bounced back into the black after a year-earlier loss, boosted by better results from its liquid crystal display television business.

For the full year ending March 31, Sony narrowed its net loss forecast to Y70 billion from a loss of Y95 billion in its previous outlook. It kept its revenue forecast unchanged at Y7.3 trillion, but halved its operating loss forecast to Y30 billion from an October projection of Y60 billion.

Sony posted a marked improvement in results from its core electronics business. The consumer products and devices division said cost reductions and a somewhat weaker yen helped boost the performance of liquid crystal display televisions and digital cameras even though sales fell 10.7%. The unit reported an operating profit of Y49.4 billion versus a loss of Y19.8 billion in the same period of the previous year.

At its network products and services business, home to its video game division, Sony returned to profit during the quarter with net income of Y19.4 billion from a loss of Y5.9 billion in the year-earlier period. Sales rose 1.9% to Y606.1 billion.

Sales of the PS3 console started to pick up after Sony dropped the price of its model with an 80-gigabyte hard drive by 25% to $299 in September.

Sony did not provide financial forecasts for the coming fiscal year, but Mr. Oneda did offer some clues about how it saw its products shaping up. He said he expects its LCD television sales to rise at least 33% to more than 20 million units in the fiscal year starting April 1, 2010 from a projection for 15 million units in the current fiscal year.

Sony also sees significant growth potential in the e-reader market. The company said it expects to sell more than one million units in 2010 and then sees that figure growing two-fold or three-fold in the next few years.

According to Bioware’s Ray Muzyka, the company had such a good experience making Dragon Age: Origins for the PlayStation 3 that they have more in store for the system.

“We’ve got a few titles in development for PS3 right now,” Muzyka said in an interview with Eurogamers, “As well as a few for 360, across the studios I manage.”

I’m sure you’re wondering what he’s talking about… could this be a PlayStation 3 version of Mass Effect or Mass Effect 2?  Or are we talking about something completely new and awesome? It is too early to tell at this time.

“I won’t say what they are, since not all of them have been announced yet,” Muzyka said.

One game that Muzyka did mention by name: Mass Effect 3.

“We haven’t formally announced Mass Effect 3 yet (though I can say that the team is working on the next installment in the trilogy now).”

Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain, a game that’s stole our hearts and left us reaching for our wallets, has gone gold, and a demo for the title is inbound.

Going gold means the game’s ready to be burned to millions of Blu-Ray discs to be shipped to retail outlets everywhere.

As far as the demo is concerned, come February 11, every man, woman, child, and half-link, can get his or her hands on a demo for the game.

No word has come our way about what exactly gamers will do in the demo, but ambitious storytelling is the name of the game, so we can expect that? Yeah, probably.

Heavy Rain comes exclusively to the PlayStation 3 February 23.

BioWare’s Mass Effect 2 is one of the biggest titles of 2010. While the PlayStation 3 has a solid exclusive line-up that rivals just about any in history, the exclusion of Mass Effect 2 is a soft spot for January. However, there is a possibility that the title might still end up the PlayStation 3 platform.

In a recent Bonus Round of GameTrailers, the host Geoff Keighley showed strong belief that Mass Effect 2 will be a timed-exclusive title. Geoff Keighley stated the following:

“I think the game will eventually come out for PlayStation 3 but they just can’t talk about it yet.”

For now, this is just speculation, but hopefully the speculation turns into reality for PlayStation 3 owners.

Days after announcing he’d managed to hack Sony’s PlayStation 3 console to run his own software George Hotz has released the exploit online.

Hotz, who is best known for cracking Apple’s iPhone, said in a blog posting that he had decided to release the exploit to see what others could do with it and because he wanted to move on to other work.

“Hopefully, this will ignite the PS3 scene, and you will organize and figure out how to use this to do practical things, like the iPhone when jailbreaks were first released,” he wrote. “I have a life to get back to and can’t keep working on this all day and night.”

On Friday Hotz said he had managed to hack the PlayStation 3 after five weeks of work with “very simple hardware cleverly applied, and some not so simple software.”

PlayStation 3 consoles typically only run software that has been digitally signed by Sony. It’s part of the complex digital rights management system designed to thwart software piracy but the hack represents a first crack in that digital protection.

With the release of the exploit online many programmers will likely start to examine the PlayStation 3 for ways to get deeper into the system. For some the prime goal will be to crack the encryption system that ensures illegally copied games cannot be played on the console while others will likely be motivated by the technical challenge of running their own software on the powerful PlayStation 3 platform.

“The PS3 is hacked, it’s your job to figure out something useful to do with it,” wrote Hotz in a zip file included with the exploit.

The exploit Hotz has found works with the PlayStation 3’s OtherOS feature that allows a second operating system to be installed on the machine. This feature was discontinued on newer model machines, the so-called “PS3 Slim” consoles.

Sony is also examining the code. Its Tokyo-based gaming unit, Sony Computer Entertainment, said it is looking into the claims made by Hotz and declined to comment until it has finished its investigation.

If the software is improved upon then Sony could be pushed to release a firmware update that plugs the hole or holes through which Hotz attacked the system.

That’s what happened when Hotz cracked the iPhone. Apple began a virtual cat-and-mouse with developers and would rush out system updates as soon as new versions of the iPhone Jailbreak software were published.

After September 22 but before December 21, that’s when you’ll see the PlayStation 3’s spiffy new motion controller on store shelves, says Sony. In a press release issued late last night, the company revealed its wand-based motion control peripheral for the PS3 will ship this fall in Japan, North America, and Europe with ready-to-play software. (Note to Sony: It’s just ’software’, ’software titles’ is technically double-dipping.)

“We have decided to release the Motion Controller in fall 2010 when we will be able to offer an exciting and varied line-up of software titles that will deliver the new entertainment experience to PS3 users, ” said Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Kazuo Hirai in the press statement.

“We will continue to work to have a comprehensive portfolio of attractive and innovative games for the Motion Controller, not only from SCE Worldwide Studios but also from the third party developers and publishers, whom we have been working closely with. We look forward to soon unveiling the exciting software line-up that further expands and defines the PS3 platform as the ultimate entertainment system for the home.”

Microsoft’s ‘no controller’ motion sensing alternative, dubbed Project Natal, is due to ship by the end of the year, probably in November, placing it head-to-head with Sony’s product.

As expected, you’ll need the PlayStation Eye camera to use the double-wand system. The Eye’s been available for years, of course, and retails for $40 today. It’s also arguably the most underutilized, prematurely released official Sony peripheral in existence, so unless you’re hip to play Eye of Judgment (a totally decent card game, by the way) I’d wait to pick one up until they’re discounting it later this year, or, you know, bundling it with the PlayStation Arc.

Hold up, the PlayStation Arc? What the heck is that?

If you buy VG247’s claim, raised ‘on good authority’, a Sony insider says that’s what the motion controller’s actually named. You know, Arc. Like the plasma bolts spit from a Tesla Coil.

Interestingly, Sony says–my emphasis–that it will “vigorously promote the Motion Controller as the de facto controller of the PS3 platform along with the DUALSHOCK series controller.”

Translation: The Arc–I mean Tentatively Labeled Motion Controller Wand Duo PlayStation Accessory Thingy–gets to ride up front with the big boys. No lounging in the backseat or huddling in the trunk with neglected peripherals like the Eye, or the forlorn SIXAXIS accelerometer.

The PlayStation 3 verrsion of Just Cause 2, Square Enix’s upcoming open-world game, will have an interesting new feature. In order to help you capture those moments of gameplay that have to be seen to be believed, you will be able to upload clips directly to YouTube.

The game will automatically record the last 30 seconds of play to upload those once-in-a-lifteime occurrences, but will also give you the ability to set up 10-minute videos through the in-game menu.

Although the game will release on both PS3 and Xbox 360, only the PS3 version will have this feature.

Sony has announced that the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console has sold 3 million units in the United Kingdom since it was launched.

“We’d like to offer a huge thank you to our retail partners in helping us pass the 3 million PS3 milestone,” said Ray Maguire of Sony UK.  “The £249 price point is enabling us to reach a much broader audience and our line up of software, Heavy Rain, and God of War III – and that’s just in Q1 – should help maintain the momentum.” Back in July of last year, the console had reportedly moved 2.2 million units in the region, highlighting a very decent 800,000 units sold in the second half of 2009.

Around the same time, Microsoft had said the Xbox 360 was up to 3.9 million units in the UK, while in December of 2009, Nintendo revealed that the Wii had reached 6 million unit sales. The Wii is leading the market easily worldwide with 56 million units sold globally.

Microsoft revealed at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that the Xbox 360 console sold 39 million units worldwide since it was launched. The last time the global installed base of the PlayStation 3 (PS3) was revealed by Sony was in its Q2 2009 financial data, and at the time the console had sold 27 million units worldwide.