Sony slumped to post an operating loss in the second quarter, taking a heavy hit from a massive recall of faulty batteries and spiralling costs attached to its delayed PlayStation 3 games console.

The embattled Japanese group revealed an operating loss of 20.8 billion yen (£93 million) in the quarter, down from an operating profit of 74.6 billion yen a year earlier.

The figures included a 51.2 billion yen provision for charges linked to the recall of some 9.6 million potentially combustive laptop batteries that Sony supplied to a string of manufacturers including Dell, Apple and Lenovo.

Net profits for the quarter plunged 94.1 per cent to 1.7 billion yen.

The quarterly figures comes just days after Sony slashed group operating profits targets for the year to 50 billion yen, from 130 billion yen, as it cut its net profit target to 80 billion yen from 130 billion.

Today's confirmation of Sony's woes, which will increase the pressure on the Welsh-born chief executive, Sir Howard Stringer, came as rival Nintendo said its operating profits more than trebled, to 67.1 billion yen, in the first half, buoyed by strong sales of its handheld DS games console.

In contrast, Sony posted a 43.5 billion yen operating loss from its games division, on slower sales of its handheld PSP and the ageing PlayStation 2. Software sales also suffered as gamers' interest in Sony faded after the group was forced to delay the long-awaited PlayStation 3 earlier this year amid rising costs and production problems.

The group's operating profits slump in the third quarter came despite record electronics sales, up 8.3 per cent to 1,850 billion yen on strong demand for Bravia LCD televisions, VAIO PCs and Cyber-shot digital cameras.

Sony's pictures division also slumped further into the red at the operating level, posting a 15.3 billion yen loss, widening from 6.6 billion yen a year earlier after two releases, Zoom and All the King's Men, underperformed at the box office.

Nobuyuki Oneda, Sony's chief financial officer, told a press conference in Tokyo: "While sales hit an all-time high in the second quarter, thanks to brisk sales of electronics products such as Bravia LCD TVs and increased revenue from movies, our operating performance tumbled into the red, largely because of one-off costs related to the global recall of our lithium-ion batteries."

The group had previously assumed that 5.9 million batteries would be recalled at an estimated cost of between 20 billion yen and 30 billion yen.

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