Sony's games division in good health thanks to strong PS4 sales

Sony has posted its financials for the quarter ending December 31, and sales and profits are down at the Japanese electronics giant despite strong PlayStation 4 sales. 

Year-over-year sales fell by 7.1 percent to 2.39 trillion yen ($20.6 billion) across the entire company, while profits dropped by 83.7 percent to 19.6 billion yen ($169 million) during the same period. 

It's not all bad news though, and the company's Games and Network Services Segment -- which houses its video game operations -- has been ticking over nicely. 

An increase in PS4 software sales, particularly on the digital front, combined with a PS4 hardware price drop helped the division to sales of 617.7 billion yen ($5.32 billion), a year-over-year increase of 5.2 percent. 

Putting that into context, Sony sold 9.7 million PS4's during the quarter compared with 8.4 million this time last year, and also talked up the impact of its PlayStation VR headset (though specific sales figures were notably absent). 

As previously reported, the PS4 has now surpassed 50 million lifetime sales, with the console having sold 53.4 million units as of January 1, 2017.

Due to that positive performance, Sony has upwardly revised the division's sales forecast by 3.1 percent, and now expects to see sales total 1.64 trillion yen ($14.6 billion) by the end of this fiscal year. 

Sony has also revised its consolidated forecast, and now expects company-wide sales and profits to clock in at 7.6 trillion yen ($67.6 billion) and 26 billion yen ($231 million) by March 31, 2017.