Sony has reported an annual profit for the first time in five years, boosted by asset sales and a weakening yen.
Net profit was 43bn yen ($436m; £280m) in the year to 31 March, compared with a 457bn loss a year earlier.
Sony said the yen’s recent fall, which makes its goods cheaper for foreign buyers, boosted sales. A weak yen also lifts profits when firms repatriate their foreign earnings back home.
Sony has been hinting at a 4K-resolution movie service for some time now, but it seems that it may be a reality for Play Station 4 owners.
Sony Electronics President & COO Phill Molyneux was interviewed by The Verge about 4K resolution on the Play Station 4, and he talked about how 4K movies will be “100 gigabytes and plus” in size. To a lot of gamers, that doesn’t sound like a pleasant adventure in Download Land.
Samsung, Sony and Hewlett-Packard took to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, over the weekend to announce new tablets that could rival Apple’s iPad.
Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0
The most notable of the tablets is Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8.0, which will be the South Korean tech company’s direct competitor to Apple’s iPad mini and the Google Nexus 7. As noted by its name, the Galaxy Note 8.0 has an eight-inch screen with a 1,280-by-800-pixel resolution. Like other Galaxy Note products, the new Samsung tablet will also come with the S Pen stylus.
Sony announced it’s next generation gaming system: The PlayStation 4. Andrew House, president of Sony Computer Entertainment, kicked off the announcement by explaining that the PlayStation 4 is totally focused on games and gamers — a pleasant change of pace when compared to the multimedia focus the Xbox team has taken lately.
A reliable Kotaku source has informed us that the Play Station 4, codenamed Orbis, will be out this November in the United States.
Our source—the same reliable source who back in early 2012 told us the codename for Sony’s next console and the codename for Microsoft’s next console—tells us that there are two models planned for the new machine, and that pricing won’t be announced until later this year, possibly around E3. The current plan, our source says, is to release them at $429 and $529, but that could change.
Finally putting speculation to rest, a Sony representative confirmed with Crave today (and subsequently on Twitter) that Sony tablet owners in “all regions will have Android 4.0 by end of May.” And on a related note, a Sony Japan statement announced a May 24 drop date for Android 4.0 landing on both Tablet S and Tablet P devices specifically in that country, perhaps a timeframe we should expect elsewhere.
The Sony PlayStation Network will be down for thirteen hours on Monday, although most of the downtime will take place during work hours.