Sony Q1 financials: $1.2bn in game sales, Vita ignored

Sony has posted its first-quarter financial report for the year, revealing the company's numbers were relatively flat, despite a 322% increase in operating costs thanks to the impending launch of PS4.

For the three-month period ended June 30, 2013, Sony's game business raked in ¥117.9 ($1.2 billion) in sales, which is a slight dip on last year's Q1 revenue of ¥118 ($1.2 billion).

Due to the increased cost being ploughed into PS4 R&D, production and marketing, Sony's operating income dropped 322%, resulting in a loss of ¥14.8 billion ($149 million). By contrast, Q1 2012 yielded only a ¥3.5 billion loss.

The site adds however, that the Q1 2012 loss wasn't as bad due to Sony winning a Blu-Ray patent case during the period and receiving compensation.

Sony's PS Vita handheld was notably absent from the document, while the company confirmed that sales of PS3, PS2 and PSP were down. PS3 sales hit 1.1 million for the quarter globally, while combined sales of PS Vita and PSP hit 0.6 million. However, raw PS Vita figures were nowhere to be seen on the document.

Predicitions for the financial year ending March 31, 2014, Sony expects sales to rise thanks to PS4 and operating income to drop thanks to marketing the console.

Sony shifted 64 million game units in Q1 2013 alone across physical and digital formats.