Strong PS4 Sales Help Sony Maintain Profit

Sony sold 6.4 million PlayStation 4s, and 1.1 million PlayStation 3s, between October and December to help push its quarterly game profits to $228 million.

The robust home console sales helped Sony's struggling electronics empire to record about $21 billion in revenue during the quarter, with profit coming in at about $1.5 billion. (Due to the Sony Pictures hack in December, its accounting teams were unable to complete the full report in time, which means these numbers are technically still forecasts).

Despite the game segment's strong performance overall, sales of PlayStation TV and the PS Vita continued to miss targets, with combined sales reaching 1.4 million. As such, Sony has announced a writedown on the value of those assets, to the tune of $93 million.

"This write-down was recorded because the latest forecast of PS TV unit sales does not reach our original forecast as a result of lower than expected unit sales in the current quarter," Sony said.

Overall, the game segment revenue came in at about $4.4 billion, which means the PlayStation business now accounts for about a fifth of Sony's entire business.