Sony sells 1.4 million Vitas in the Christmas quarter

Sony's latest official numbers are in, and it can't hide the Vita's sales behind the PSP any more. One point four million Vita and Vita TV devices were sold in the Christmas quarter, plus a few thousand PSPs, if that. That's down from 2 million a year ago.

Admittedly, it took a $92 million write-down on Vita and Vita TV (mostly the TV I'm guessing), but both Nintendo and Microsoft have done the same recently for unsold hardware. Still, for a dead console and micro console, that's not too shabby.

Some 270,000 of those sales came from Japan, according to Media Create's numbers, That's almost half of 2013's seasonal quarter, which was Sony's best since launch thanks to the arrival  of the PlayStation TV and Final Fantasy X HD in Japan, that explains almost half of the drop in sales.

Taking out Japan, that leaves 1.13 million sold around the rest of the world, I wonder how its Asian sales are doing?

If Sony can get a lift in the last (usually quiet) quarter above 500,000, and there's lots of hot games coming out in Japan, then that would be a small positive step. Sony's software contribution from the Vita must be pretty poor since it has pretty much given up on the console, but with Bandai Namco stepping up, there are still some big name games to come.

Overall, Sony posted a decent profit, but has yet to report its movie studio figures after that was hacked at the end of last year.

The gaming divisions sales were up 16.8%, led by 6.4 million PS4 sales, and helped by 1.1 million PS3 sales. While, Vita sales were down over 500,000 on last year's quarter, Sony doesn't see any further decline, maintaining its overall forecast of 3.5 million for the year.