Sony declared substantial losses for the last fiscal quarter, although the company's PlayStation business was not the problem, according to the Wall Street Journal.
It was a 176 billion yen ($1.59 billion) impairment charge of goodwill against its mobile business that primarily caused these losses, as the company found that the fair value of its mobile business had decreased.
Sony's video game business actually saw respectable increases in both sales and operating income, as the PlayStation 4 hardware continued to positively be a factor in Sony's overall bottom line.
For the first time since the PS4 launched last year, Sony included separated sales figures for the console; typically the company combines PS3 and PS4 hardware sales together.
The PS4 sold 3.3 million units during the quarter that ended September 30, up compared to the 2.7 million it sold during the first quarter. The company also broke down past quarters, asserting that the PS4 sold 4.5 million in its opening quarter, and 3.0 million in the fourth quarter of last year.
That means, in total, the PlayStation 4 has now sold 13.5 million units worldwide.
Unfortunately, the PS Vita didn't fare so well. Sales of the Vita combined with PSP sales were 700,000, down from 800,000 in past years. Across all PlayStation platforms, Sony sold 106 million software units, up from 95 million in past years.
For the quarter ended September 30, 2014, Sony's PlayStation business posted revenues of 309.5 billion yen ($2.78 billion), up 83.2 percent year-over-year, and operating income of 21.8 billion yen ($196.5 million), a shift from 4.2 billion yen ($37.9 million) losses.
Overall, Sony recorded revenues of 1.9 trillion yen ($17.2 billion), up 7.2 percent year-over-year, and losses of 136.0 billion yen ($1.2 billion), compared to 19.6 billion yen losses ($176.7 million) year-over-year.
