Sales of the PS3 are down year over year, according to Sony's latest financial reports. During the quarter from April to June this year, Sony sold 1.8 million PS3s, down from 2.4 million during the same period last year. Cumulative sales of the PS3 now stand at 51.8 million worldwide.

There are some very obvious reasons to point to for the downturn in PS3 sales. Most notably, the PlayStation Network outage likely caused some consumers to stay away from the device. Due to an intrusion in Sony's systems, the company took down PSN--including the ability to download games and play online multiplayer--between April and May.

Sony originally estimated the cost of the PlayStation Network outage would be 14 billion yen (about $170 million). However, the actual figure is now expected to be lower. Eurogamer reports that Sony CFO Masaru Kato expects "the [total] cost may be smaller than the original cost estimate."

According to Kato, PSN users have returned in full force, likely having taken advantage of the various Welcome Back offerings. "Many customers have already returned to our service," Kato said. "At one point people were concerned, [but the] impact will not be as great as we originally estimated.