If Apple is the iPhone company, Sony is most certainly the PlayStation company. Nick Summers from Engadget:

 The company sold 20 million PlayStation 4 consoles over the 12-month period, beating the 17.7 million figure posted in its 2015 fiscal year. Those numbers helped Sony’s gaming division pull in 1,650 billion yen (roughly $14.73 billion), a 6.3 percent increase year-over-year. More importantly, gaming-related profit rose by an impressive 46.9 billion yen to 135.6 billion yen (roughly $1.1 billion), up from 88.7 billion yen the year prior. 

For Q4 2016, Sony Mobile was able to post a profit mainly due to cost cutting measures but as PlayStation shows, the healthy way to do it is by creating a product consumers want to buy in droves and nearly four years in, the momentum is as strong as ever for Sony’s gaming division. So why are profits up by over 6% compared to the year before?

 Sony says that profit is mostly down to “hardware cost reductions.” That’s probably a reference to the cheaper, slimmer PS4 that came out last September — a common move (hello, PSone and PlayStation 2 slimline) to reduce manufacturing costs. Software sales played a part too, especially those sold direct through the PlayStation Network. The PlayStation 4 is unquestionably a juggernaut — the 20 million sold last year puts the console near 60 million lifetime sales. 

Of course nothing lasts forever and Sony does expect PS4 to eventually slow but it’s certainly not a cause for concern.

 While impressive, Sony expects that momentum to slow down a little. A slide in today’s earning report shows predicted console sales at 18 million for the 2017 financial year. 

With still-healthy hardware sales expected in 2017, Sony also forecasts a big increase in network sales – perhaps due to continued strength of PlayStation Vue and PlayStation Now?