You guessed it: times are tough. And few places are feeling it as bad as Sony, who have tonight announced a drop in games unit revenue, hardware sales and software sales.
As you can see in the graph above, PS2 sales are down 52% from this time last year. PSP sales are down 12%. And the PS3, as we've touched on already, is down 9%.
Things aren't looking much rosier on the software front, with PS2 sales down 51% and PSP game sales down 15%. The PS3, well, it's a lone bright spot, with game sales are up 57% (which along with cost reductions on the hardware contributed to the division staying out of the red), though that wasn't enough to stop a decline in overall sales.
In terms of cash intake, the game division's sales fell from ¥581 billion in 2007 to ¥393 billion in 2008, falling hardware and software sales not helped by fluctuations in the value of the Yen against the Dollar and Euro.