Sony (SNE) lost 26.3 billion yen ($289 million) for the period, considerably narrower than a 40.4 billion yen consensus estimate. Sales and operating revenue for the quarter fell to 1.66 trillion yen from 2.07 trillion yen a year earlier, dragged down by a strong yen, flaccid consumer demand and fierce price competition for videogame consoles and TVs.

Looking ahead, Sony improved the outlook for its fiscal year, saying it expects annual losses of 95 billion yen this year, a slight improvement over its initial estimate of 120 billion yen. Still, the company warned that the all important Christmas shopping period would likely be a weak one. “We are quite cautious in foreseeing end-of-year sales,” Sony CFO Nobuyuki Oneda said during a conference call with analysts. “In the first quarter and second quarter there was an upside in sales, but the critical moment is the Christmas season and we are not too optimistic.”

“This exclusive partnership offers you the ability to instantly stream movies and TV episodes from Netflix to the television via Xbox 360. Xbox 360 will be the only game console to offer this movie-watching experience, available to Xbox LIVE Gold members who are also Netflix unlimited plan subscribers…at no additional cost.”

– Microsoft on its Xbox 360/Netflix partnership, Aug. 2009

So much for Xbox 360’s game console exclusivity on Netflix streaming. This morning, the DVD-by-mail pioneer said that beginning sometime next month, owners of Sony’s PlayStation 3 game consoles will be able to stream movies and TV shows from Netflix.

The feature, which brings an unlimited amount of online viewing with any subscription worth $9 or more, will initially require an “instant streaming Blu-ray disc” to enable it. Not the most elegant of implementations, but presumably a firmware upgrade will likely follow and bake the feature into the PS3.

For Netflix (NFLX), the deal provides a chance to broaden its subscriber base. About nine million PlayStation 3 systems have been sold in U.S., and more than 25 million worldwide. So the potential for new customers here is substantial. For Sony (SNE), which already offers movies and TV shows to PS 3 users for a $3 to $4 fee, it’s a way of removing an Xbox 360 marketing advantage Microsoft (MSFT) has been lording over it since this past August.

“In 2004, as you may recall, we launched a slim version of PlayStation 2, a defining moment for that console, helping us to really expand the user base of PlayStation 2 further,” Sony Computer Entertainment Chief Executive Kazuo Hirai said at the Gamescom videogame trade show in Cologne, Germany. “Today is that day for PlayStation 3.”

And so, starting Sept. 1, the PS3 will be available for $299. That’s still well above Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox 360, which retails for less than $200 and Nintendo’s Wii, which sells for $250, but it’s a hell of a lot better than $399. And analysts say it will almost certainly spur demand for the console. “People were expecting this to happen. [Sony] had to do something,” MKM Partners analyst Eric Handler told MarketWatch. “This will bring some new customers to the fold.”

Indeed. But how long can Sony sustain such market share gains, when Microsoft and Nintendo are almost certainly mulling price cuts for their platforms as well?

In a research note today, FTN Equity Capital Markets analyst James Hardiman said “evidence is mounting” that Sony will announce a PS3 price cut, perhaps during its Tuesday presentation at GamesCon.

Videogame analyst Heath Terry of FBR Capital Markets shares this view, and in a note to clients, he put a dollar figure on the cut. “With Sony set to announce a $100 price cut on the PS3 on Tuesday at Gamescom in Germany according to our retail checks, we believe the other hardware manufacturers will respond with a combination of price reductions and bundling strategies that should drive significant acceleration in hardware sales,” Terry wrote, adding that the cut, should it come to pass, will mark “the first of a series of catalysts that should drive a return to growth” for the videogame industry.

Certainly, it would give Sony (SNE) a nice boost in sales in the run-up to the winter holiday consumer binge. And given its most recent financials, the company could really use one right now.

Sony’s net loss in the quarter was 37.1 billion yen ($390 million), a brutal change from the 35 billion yen profit in the year-ago period. Still, it was smaller than the 109.6 billion yen loss analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had been expecting. That said, all three of Sony’s core electronics divisions registered losses for the quarter.

Not a good sign. Because while the company’s smaller-than-expected loss proves its cost-cutting measures have been effective, it also shows that Sony (SNE) must do more than just slash jobs and suppliers if it ever hopes to regain its position in the market. For while cost-cutting might improve Sony’s bottom line, it’s not going to make the company competitive against Samsung, Nintendo and Apple (AAPL), who’ve usurped its position in TVs, gaming consoles and media players, respectively. What Sony needs most is not more cost-cutting; it’s a new gotta-have-it product.

Seriously. It’s been, what, 30 years since the debut of the Walkman?

“If (the Eee PC from) Asus starts to do well, we are all in trouble. That’s just a race to the bottom.”

– Mike Abary, senior vice president of Sony’s IT product division, February, 2008

If the netbook market is a race to the bottom, then Sony is bringing up the rear. Not a year after Sony execs disparaged netbooks as undeserving of its premium brand attention, the company announced its token entry into the market: the Vaio W.

Outfitted with a 10-inch screen, an Intel (INTC) Atom processor, 1GB of memory, a 160GB hard disk drive and Windows XP, the machine prices out at $630 in Japan, $499 in the U.S. That’s quite a bit more expensive than rival netbooks. Which is odd since the market for these machines is fairly price-sensitive. Still, Sony (SNE) feels the W is good value for the money, given its design, cheery color palette (white, brown, pink!) and screen resolution–at 1366 by 768 pixels, the W’s display is clearly better than that of its rivals.

Said Vaio chief Nicolas Barendson, “We believe that this screen resolution and design offers our customers a better experience, and that it will be popular with both newcomers to the netbook market looking for a quality portable PC at a netbook price point, and customers wanting to improve their existing netbook experience to date by upgrading their screens.”

Sony’s announcement leaves Apple (AAPL) as the lone major computer manufacturer without a netbook offering, a designation it’s likely to keep for the foreseeable future, according to company execs. “When I look at netbooks, I see cramped keyboards, terrible software, junky hardware, very small screens,” COO Tim Cook said back in April, noting that it’s “a stretch” to call a netbook a personal computer. “It’s just not a good consumer experience and not something we would put the Mac brand on…it’s not a space as it exists today that we are interested in, nor do we believe that customers in the long term would be interested in. It’s a segment we would choose not to play in.”

And at this point, the company clearly has to do something. Its last financials were grotesque and the ones to come promise to be little different. The “transformation” Sony began four years ago is still a work in progress, arguably one that’s been stalled for some time now. Once an electronics powerhouse, Sony (SNE) is now a laggard in many of the markets it once dominated: videogame consoles, digital music players and TVs. “The prices of digital home appliances have been declining by 15% to 20% every year lately,” said Sony spokesperson Mami Imada. “Unless we cut costs we cannot hope to survive the price competition.”

“If we were any more successful, we’d be bankrupt.”

– Sony CEO Howard Stringer on the company’s LCD business, May 28, 2008

About the best thing to be said for Sony’s grotesque financial results is that they came in smaller than expected. The company’s 98.9 billion yen ($1 billion) loss for the fiscal year ended March–its first net loss in 14 years–wasn’t nearly as bad as the 150.0 billion yen ($1.57 billion) figure it had predicted in January or even close to the 173.8 billion yen ($1.8 billion) analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had been forecasting. And the same is true for Sony’s fourth quarter, as well. The net loss of 165.1 billion yen ($1.7 billion) it reported was far better than the 228.7 billion yen ($2.39 billion) forecast.

Still ugly as hell, though. And according to the company’s leadership, its next fiscal year will be little different. Sony is forecasting a loss of 120 billion yen ($1.2 billion). Given that unfortunate outlook, Sony (SNE) is closing three factories in Japan, part of an ongoing effort to shore up a business ravaged by the worst recession in decades. But cost-cutting measures like that can only do so much.

As analysts note, what Sony really needs is a killer product. It is no longer the force it once was in consumer electronics, having ceded its dominance in portable music players to Apple (AAPL) and its leads in the television and videogame console markets to Samsung Electronics and Nintendo. “Their outlook gave me the impression that their business is heading for a gradual recovery,” Fujio Ando, senior managing director at Chibagin Asset Management, told Reuters. “But it would all depend on whether they would be able to start producing popular products, because right now they have no ‘Number One’ products. I see Sony’s branding power weakening.”

And that’s something of which Sony is painfully aware.

“We have two distinct challenges facing us,” Sony CEO Howard Stringer recently told the New York Times. “The first is the global slowdown, which forces us to make significant adjustments. The second challenge is the evolution of our competitive environment. New competitors [are] springing out everywhere.”

Indeed. And while Sony seems to be meeting the first challenge, albeit slowly, it hasn’t yet begun to make headway toward meeting the second. And at this point, one wonders if the company is even capable anymore. As Japanese Economy, Trade and Industry Minister and former Sony employee Akira Amari asked back in October 2006, “What has become of the Sony known for its technology?”

Confirming recent speculation, Sony this morning said that it’s dropping the price of the PlayStation 2 from $129 to $99.99 as of April 1. “With this new price, we intend to introduce a new generation of consumers–some of whom weren’t even alive when the system was first introduced in 2000–to the immense entertainment value offered by PlayStation 2,” John Koller, Sony’s director of hardware marketing, explained in a blog post. “In the gaming industry, the typical lifecycle for a console is around five years, but because we build each of our platforms for a large and diverse consumer base, we design our platforms differently. With the original PlayStation and now PlayStation 2, we’ve proven that consumers can rely on our platforms for their gaming and entertainment needs for at least a decade.”

And that does indeed seem to be the case. Though nearly 10 years old, the PS2 remains quite popular. Indeed, Sony expects to sell eight million of the consoles in its current financial year–not so far off from the 10 million PlayStation 3s it expects to sell in the same period. And it will certainly grow in popularity at this lower price point, giving Sony (SNE) a means to really take Nintendo’s Wii to the mat.

Now, about that PlayStation 3 price cut rumor: Sony isn’t planning one, though arguably that’s exactly what the console, which is being outsold two-to-one by the Xbox 360 and the Wii, needs. “As we have stated previously, we do not have plans for a PS3 price drop, and any rumors to that effect are false and are the result of speculation,” Sony Computer Entertainment America said in a statement. “SCEA remains focused on the long-term momentum of PS3. With the industry’s best software lineup this year, combined with our most aggressive marketing campaign to date, we remain confident in our approach and the value we’re delivering with PS3.”

“I think the iPhone and iPod touch may emerge as really viable devices in the mobile games market.”

– Apple CEO Steve Jobs, November 2008

Sony doesn’t consider Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone a serious rival to its PlayStation Portable. This according to Sony Computer Entertainment’s Ray Maguire, who says a converged device like the iPhone will always be inferior to a dedicated gaming platform like the PSP. “The iPhone has the advantage of being a single device and is growing a reasonable installed base, but it doesn’t have the production power that a PSP has,” he told MCV. “As a specific games machine, the PSP is always going to win out.”

Not that Sony (SNE) is ignoring the fast-developing market for time-waster, or snacking, games that has arisen around the iPhone. Said Maguire, “We’re in a great position to take on the interest in these snacking games and produce them at better quality, lower prices, with lower cost of development–that’s a great business model.”

“I think the iPhone and iPod touch may emerge as really viable devices in the mobile games market.”

– Apple CEO Steve Jobs, November 2008

Sony doesn’t consider Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone a serious rival to its PlayStation Portable. This according to Sony Computer Entertainment’s Ray Maguire, who says a converged device like the iPhone will always be inferior to a dedicated gaming platform like the PSP. “The iPhone has the advantage of being a single device and is growing a reasonable installed base, but it doesn’t have the production power that a PSP has,” he told MCV. “As a specific games machine, the PSP is always going to win out.”

Not that Sony (SNE) is ignoring the fast-developing market for time-waster, or snacking, games that has arisen around the iPhone. Said Maguire, “We’re in a great position to take on the interest in these snacking games and produce them at better quality, lower prices, with lower cost of development–that’s a great business model.”

What has become of the Sony known for its technology? I hope it will solve its problems soon to quickly recover its brand image reputed for technological prowess.”

– Japanese Economy, Trade and Industry Minister and former Sony employee Akira Amari, October 2006

Now that Sony’s old guard has taken what was once a strong electronics and gaming brand and run it into the ground, the company’s new guard is circling back to resurrect it. This morning the company announced a management overhaul that will see CEO Howard Stringer succeed Ryoji Chubachi as president and assume responsibility for Sony’s key electronics division. It will also see the creation of two new business groups: The first, Networked Products & Services Group, will consolidate Sony Computer Entertainment, the company’s Vaio division and its mobile and Walkman unit. The second, the New Consumer Products Group, will include Sony’s TV, digital imaging, home audio and video businesses. Spanning the two groups will be a cross-divisional software and technology unit charged with ensuring compatibility among their products.

Sony (SNE) says its new structure is aimed at giving the company the agility it has so sorely lacked for so long and to “speed up the transformation of Sony that was started four years ago,” which has all but stalled, if the company’s recent financial performance is any indication. “Have I broken down all the silo walls? No,” Stringer told the New York Times. “Are they very strong and very thick? Yes. But we’ve broken down a lot of them. Our goal is to continue to do that. We have two distinct challenges facing us. The first is the global slowdown, which forces us to make significant adjustments. The second challenge is the evolution of our competitive environment. New competitors springing out everywhere.”