Sony may have something to cheer about despite its recent deep cut on annual operating profit guidance.

The company’s PlayStation 3 console has outsold the Xbox 360 for the second quarter of the fiscal year, selling 2.43 million units compared with Microsoft’s 2.2 million consoles. That compares with 1.31 million PS3 consoles sold versus 1.8 million Xbox 360 consoles sold in the same period last year.

Sony hopes to push out more sales from its previous generation PlayStation 2 console as well. The PS2 will now essentially be an open platform in Europe; developers will no longer have to submit a game to Sony for content approval, Sony Europe’s developer relations manager George Bain said at the Casual Connect conference in Kiev, Ukraine, last week.

While this allows developers to avoid licensing fees, they’ll still have to pay for dev kits. But in encouraging development for the PS2, Mr. Bain said that Sony would lend developer kits in certain cases, and he pointed out that for smaller, casual titles, Sony also offers a debug kit.

The move would help maintain the PS2’s momentum, as it still outsells the PS3 in Japan.

The 8-year-old system has already sold over 140 million units worldwide, making it the best-selling console ever.