Gaming pushes strong Sony Q3 earnings

Sony delivers another strong holiday quarter thanks in no small part to the PlayStation brand.

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Sony Corp's Games and Network Services segment, which includes games and movies sold on the PlayStation Network, PS4 hardware and physical software, as well as subscription services, has pushed the company's quarterly earnings once again. As far as Fiscal Q3'17 numbers the G&NS segment raked in 718 billion yen ($6.35 billion) in sales, up 100 billion yen and 16.3% year-over-year. Operating income sits at 85 billion yen ($752.21 billion), up 35 billion yen and 70% year-over-year.

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But what's most impressive is that Sony's Network segment (digital game sales, subscriptions, streaming, etc) broke 300 billion yen in a single quarter for the first time ever.

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This was likely driven by a strong wave of PS4 hardware sales--console sales are now at 73.6 million worldwide--as well as a big spike in digital sales, not to mention an influx of PlayStation Plus subscribers.

Sony forecasts the gaming segment to rake in 1.940 trillion yen throughout the entire fiscal year, reduced by 60 billion yen due to PlayStation discounts and restructuring. It expects to sell 19 million consoles by March 31, 2018, and the company only needs to sell 2.5 million more units in order to meet that goal.

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