According to some number-crunching by the Guardian, Sony might actually be losing more money per PlayStation 3 sold than its figures show.

A look at Sony's recently-announced financials show a significantly improved condition for the company's PlayStation business year over year. Sony's game division lost $1.2 billion on the year - last year, though, that number was over $2 billion.

So the company's clearly closing an internal gap. Its own figures, however, seem to show $130 lost on each PS3 it ships. The Guardian, however, points to the profitability of the PSP and continuing strength of the PlayStation 2 to paint a different picture. From its article:

"On Sony's own figures, the games division made a loss of $130 for each PlayStation 3 shipped. Let's assume that it's making pots of money on the PSP and the PlayStation 2: the PS2 is now hugely profitable and still sells more games than anything else. These two platforms could easily have made a profit of $1.2bn in the year. In that case, the total PS3 loss would have been $2.4bn shared between 9.24m PS3 consoles, or $260 per PS3 — including any attached Sony games."

Is Sony losing $260 on every PS3 it ships? [The Guardian]

Contact information for this author is not available.