Sony has published its financial forecast and expects to sell another 20 million PS4 units before April 1st 2017 – the end of their fiscal year.

　　With PS4 sales currently projected at roughly 40 million units globally, this would mean that Sony will have sold around 60 million PlayStation 4 consoles by April 2017 – an amazing feat.

　　Additionally, Sony believes that, after being on sale for 2.5 years, it is beginning to harvest profit with their console. Sony’s chief financial officer, Kenichiro Yoshida, said as much while presenting the consolidated financial forecast for fiscal year 2016.

　　Next, I will talk about the Game & Network Services segment. We expect FY16 sales to increase 8% and operating income to be 135 billion yen due to the continued strong momentum of PlayStation 4. We expect unit sales of PlayStation 4 for the fiscal year to be 20 million units. The historical high for annual PlayStation production shipments was 22.52 million units of PlayStation2 in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2003. Approximately two and a half years have passed since the PlayStation 4 went on sale, and we believe we are beginning to enter the part of the console cycle where we harvest profit. In October of this year, we will begin selling PlayStation VR. As for PlayStation Vue, we are positioning FY16 as another investment year, like last fiscal year. It has been the nature of this business segment to have large swings in profitability on a fiscal year basis depending on where we are in the console cycle, but, by increasing network sales, we are trying to raise the baseline of profitability.

　　For reference, Sony’s PS3 managed to sell more than 80 million units by November 2013 – seven years after the console was launched. The legendary PS2 sold around 100 million units as of November 2005 – 5 years after the console was released globally.