Sony slashes PS Vita sales expectations by 3 million units

The games division at Sony has slashed its sales expectations for the PS Vita by a whopping 3 million units after reporting a 15 percent drop in year-on-year revenue for the company's third quarter of FY2012 of ¥268.5 billion ($2.86 billion/£1.82 billion), with the first-party publisher blaming poor hardware and software sales for the result.

Sales of Sony's PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 2 consoles, which are lumped together in the company's reports, were down to 6.8 million from 7.4 million this time last year. Software sales for Sony's home consoles were 61.7 million units, down from 2011's 68.7 million units.

The PSP and the PS Vita, sales of which are also combined in Sony's reports, saw an increase to 2.7 million units sold as opposed to last year's 2.4 million. It's worth remembering, mind, that the PS Vita was available only briefly in Japan before last year's report was calculated.

However, 2.7 million units was not enough to stop Sony from cutting 3 million off its forecast for PS Vita sales, with the company predicting 10 million units to be sold before the end of Sony's financial year in March. Sony saw the "slow penetration" of the PS Vita as an ongoing issue, and promised to support the handheld device with more software.

Software sales for Sony's handheld consoles dropped from 11.4 million units in Q4 last year to 8.9 million this year.

Looking ahead, Sony is holding an event on February 20 where it is expected the publisher will unveil the PlayStation 4 to the public. The event will be live-streamed from New York at 18:00 EST/15:00 PST/23:00 GMT, and GameSpot will be in attendance.

Overall, the Sony Corporation posted a 6.9 percent year-on-year increase in revenue, to ¥1.95 trillion, and stemmed the massive ¥159 billion loss in net revenue this time last year to a far healthier ¥10.8 billion.