PS4 software fueling growth at Sony as hardware stalls

Sony has released its financials for the full-year ended March 31, 2018, and strong software sales once again fueled growth in the company's games division. 

Sales in division increased by 18 percent year-over-year to 1.94 trillion yen ($17.7 billion), largely due to the positive performance of PlayStation 4 software. Profits rose by 30.8 percent to 177.5 billion yen ($1.62 billion), again as a result of strong software sales. 

Sony doesn't expect that upward trend to continue, however, and is predicting a drop off in sales next year due to declining PlayStation 4 hardware sales - although it expects profits to hold firm thanks to its software lineup. 

Indeed, this year the company managed to sell 19 million PS4 consoles, taking lifetime sales to over 76 million units. 

Last year, however, the console maker managed to shift 20 million units, and given its now only predicting sales of 16 million units for the upcoming year (as the graph below shows), it wouldn't be lunacy to suggest the system may have peaked. 

Looking ahead then, Sony expects its games division to have pulled in sales of 1.9 trillion yen ($17.4 billion) and profits of 190 billion yen ($1.74 billion) by the end of the next fiscal year on March 31, 2019. 

Meanwhile, the company as a whole also reported a bump in sales and profits, with overall sales rising by 12.4 percent to 8.54 trillion yen ($77 billion) and profits increasing by 569 percent to 490 billion yen ($4.42 billion).