Sony received some respite from its game console woes yesterday with the announcement that profits had more than doubled in the last quarter, thanks to strong sales of consumer electronics.

The company's net profit for April to June was ¥66.46bn (£269m), compared with ¥32.29bn a year ago. Quarterly sales rose 13.3% to ¥1.977 trillion from ¥1.744 trillion the previous year.

Sony said its operating profit forecast for the current fiscal year, which ends in March, would remain unchanged at ¥440bn - higher than market expectations and well above last year's ¥71.5bn, when its profits were hit by the costly launch of the PlayStation 3 game console.

The company reported strong sales of flat-panel televisions, digital recorders and video camcorders, and better overseas earnings thanks to the weak yen, but its game unit continues to struggle. It said it had shipped 710,000 PS3 game consoles in the April-June quarter. Its rival Nintendo shipped 3.43m Wii consoles over the same period.

The PS3 has fared better in the US since Sony cut the price of the 60-gigabyte version by $100 (£49) two weeks ago, and the company believes interest will rise with the launch of a model with an 80-gigabyte hard drive.

"Thanks to these measures, PS3 sales are picking up pace," said Sony's chief financial officer, Nobuyuki Oneda.

Earlier this week Nintendo reported a fivefold increase in quarterly profit and raised its annual earnings forecast 40% as it continued to cash in on the popularity of the Wii and the DS hand-held console.

The Kyoto-based firm has sold 9.27m Wii machines since their launch eight months ago and expects to sell a total of 16.5m by the end of next March, 2.5m more than forecast. It has also sold 47.27m DS consoles since they went on the market in late 2004.