Dragged down by the inevitable costs of launching a new console, Sony's first quarter profits suffered to the tune of about $230 million. Fortunately for Sony this setback came as no surprise, as a slump in sales had been widely predicted.

With game sales down 30% for the year, the burden has been shifted to other more profitable divisions within the company. Sony is deeply diversified, very large and more than capable of dealing with market fluctuations.

While Sony's game division has been a poor performer of late, as a whole the company reported that sales were up 11%, bolstered by strong growth in sales of notebook computers, televisions and cameras.

Analysts were surprised by the extent of Sony's growth in net income over the previous year. After cutting nearly 10,000 jobs and receiving a boost from the arrival of HDTV, Sony has raised its operating profit forecast by 30%, pointing to a strong future for the company in the near term.

Another update of Xvid4PSP by Winnydows has been released. The application is a conversion tool for Windows PCs. You can input AVI, DIVX and WMV formats, and Xvid4PSP can not only convert the file to a PSP-combatible format (PMP, AVC and MP4), but also to other regular PC formats.

Note that you need to have AviSynth v2.56a and the .NET Framework 2.0 installed in order to execute Xvid4PSP. Here's the changelog for version 4.013 as mailed by the author:

-Mencoder replaced to more compatible build 1.0pre8.
-Fixed work on Windows XP 64.
-ForceFilm now locked on sources other from 29.970 fps.
-Fixed MP4 PSP output.
-To menu apps added program DVD Shrink. Program help you encode encrypted DVDs.
-Fixed 2 pass mencoder encoding. Encoding in Mencoder 40% faster! Mencoder process temporary unhided.
-DGIndex updated to 1.4.8.
-Added new engine - VirtualDub. Now only for XviD and DivX encoding. Fast and very High Quality. For encoding used installed codecs. Don't forget install DivX Pro! XviD will install automaticly. Now default engine VirtualDub for DivX and XviD encoding. Mencoder still work.
-Turned on force samplerate for MP3 encoding on bitrate lower than 112kbps.
-In VirtualDub engine now used HDTV codec profiles for HDTV encoding. Now for AAC encoding default bitrate 64kbps.
-Fixed encoding of AVS sources.
-Fixed encoding of mono sources to PMP format.
-Removed ffmpeg (now not used).

Thanks to Winnydows for sending this in.

Download: [Xvid4PSP 4.013]