Surging PS4 Sales Send PlayStation Profit Skywards

Sony's games division has recorded $404 million operating profit during the twelve months following April 2014.

The upbeat financial results were in part due to strong PlayStation 4 sales, which reached 14.8 million units worldwide during the twelve-month period. Sony expects these numbers will accelerate upwards, predicting 16 million more PS4 units sold in the twelve months from April 2015.

However, its portable division, which includes the PlayStation Vita and PlayStation TV, continued to slide. Sales fell to 3.3 million for the financial year, down from 4.1 million the year prior. PlayStation 3 hardware and software sales also continued to decline.

Sony noted that the strong overall performance for its PlayStation division was also due to a "significant" increase in network revenue, as well as robust game software sales.

Encompassing all its business performances, from photography to phones, the wider Sony corporation announced a $576 million profit, a figure up 159 percent year-on-year.

This year's earnings mark Sony's biggest annual operating profit in the past seven years, a dour period for the company, in which it had to revise its income projections downwards on fifteen separate occasions.

More promising news for investors came from Sony's FY15/16 projections, with the company expecting its profits to quadruple over the next twelve months.