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By Mariko Katsumura and Sam Nussey
TOKYO (Reuters) - Sony said on Friday its operating profit rose 73% in the July-September quarter, with strong sales in its game and network business helping to offset weakness in the production of television shows.
Sony, whose businesses also include music and chips, maintained its profit forecast of 1.31 trillion yen ($8.51 billion) for the year to March, largely in line with the 1.34 trillion yen estimate of 24 analysts polled by LSEG.
Sony's second quarter operating profit soared to 455.1 billion yen from 263 billion yen a year before, helped by solid sales of image sensors.
As well as a rise in third-party software sales, Sony President Hiroki Totoki highlighted improving profitability in its game hardware business.
"We continue seeing a smooth shift (among consumers) to PS5 from PS4, which is leading to higher software sales also," Totoki said in an earnings briefing.
Sony generates more than a third of its revenues from the game and network service segment, where profit nearly tripled to 138.8 billion yen during the quarter. Sony released an upgraded version of its flagship console with better graphics on Nov. 7.
It raised the game sector's annual profit outlook to 355 billion yen from 320 billion yen, leading to a slight upward revision of group annual revenue forecast to 12.71 trillion yen.
Although Sony's sales of its PlayStation 5 were down 22% from the second quarter in 2023 at 3.8 million, it maintained a sales forecast of 18 million units for this financial year.
The industry is grappling with the rising cost of creating games and Sony said last month it was shutting down two PlayStation developers, including "Concord" developer Firework Studios, which launched the game in August.
Sony's pictures segment generated a profit of 18.5 billion yen in the quarter, down from 29.4 billion yen a year ago, in part due to the delayed releases of TV series after Hollywood's strikes in 2023.
($1 = 152.8700 yen) (This story has been corrected to say that delayed TV releases, and not movies, hurt profit, in the headline and paragraphs 1 and 10; and corrects operating profit figure and comparison in paragraph 10)
(Reporting by Mariko Katsumura and Sam Nussey; Editing by Himani Sarkar, Muralikumar Anantharaman and Alexander Smith)
