• Posted February 8th, 2013 at 10:48 EDT by Steven Williamson
• 8 Comments

The PlayStation 4 announcement may just be around the corner, but Sony believes the PlayStation 3 still has plenty of life in it.

During an earning’s call to investors, Sony Chief Financial Officer Masaru Kato was confident that there’s still a bright future for PS3 and confirmed that it’s no longer losing money on the hardware.

"In its sixth year, I think it still has a long life," said Kato. "And here, we're not in the stage where we are losing money in the hardware anymore. So again, there are discussions about the next platform, I cannot dwell on that at all at the moment. But in any case, we have a lot of business in PS3."

The fact that Sony didn’t use the earning's call to talk about Vita sales speaks volumes for how its worldwide performance hasn’t lived up to expectations, but the Japanese manufacturer has conceded that it needs to do better at marketing and promoting its handheld, and believes that third-party developers can help by making better games.

"Now one thing clear for us that in terms of profitability, we have to do a better job in promoting the PlayStation Vita mobile product," said Kato. "How do we do that? Well, gaming business software is the name of the game. So as a fundamental measure, we are putting all - a lot of resources, not just first party, but also asking third parties to put out more attractive software.

During the call, Sony reported that last quarter revenues in its games division were down by 14 percent year-on-year from ¥316.1 billion to ¥268.5 billion. Operating income was hit more heavily, 86 percent down from ¥33.8 billion to ¥4.6 billion.

Sony’s next venture, the PlayStation 4, is expected to be revealed at an event in New York City on February 20, 2013.