In what comes across as a strangely optimistic admission of failure, Sony's chief financial officer has revealed the comany's recently reported games division losses weren't as terrible as expected - due to the lack of traction related to PlayStation 3s sold at a loss.

Something tells GamerSquad that Sony CFO Nobuyuki Oneda is somewhat missing the point, or just blissfully ignorant regarding the fact that Nintendo sold five times as many Wii consoles during 2007's first fiscal quarter, which ending in June:

"Sales of the PS3 have risen but we booked losses due to our strategic decision to price it below the (production) cost. Actually, because the number of units sold was not as high as we hoped, the loss was better than our original expectation," Oneda said.

Last Thursday, the Japanese electronics giant posted an operating loss of $237 million USD for its games division, apparently connected to the PS3 retail price being lower than its actual production cost. Current estimates show that Sony loses $200 USD on every PS3 unit sold. Ouch. By way of contrast, Nintendo is known to make a profit on every Wii that is gleefully snatched from store shelves.

Oneda added that "the main battle is still ahead," and that he was confident software developers would continue to support Sony's next-gen platform.