Sony says it needs to do "a better job in promoting" Vita, PS3 "still has a long life"

Sony CFO Masaru Kato told investors during a call discussing the firm's Q3 2012 results that it needs to do "a better job in promoting" Vita.

The executive said one of the ways to improve profitability for the handheld is to attract more third-party developers interested in creating "more attractive software."

"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.

"That's the basics. The other thing, well, marketing, pricing of the product, et cetera, I cannot talk about pricing of this platform, but those are the things that we are looking into to improve our profitability in the mobile handheld gaming business."

Kato also touched on the longevity of PS3, which he feels in its sixth year "still has a long life" and Sony is no longer losing money on the system.

"There are discussions about the next platform, I cannot dwell on that at all at the moment," he said. "But in any case, we have a lot of business in PS3. Now to give you an indication of how, well, stable this business is, although we have reduced forecast on many of our product lines from television, digital still cameras and, et cetera, but mobile phones and home game devices, we have not changed the forecast on these for this fiscal year.

"I hope will give an indication of our confidence in this platform going forward."

Sony is expected to reveal the next PlayStation console during an event in New York City week after next.