Strong PS4 Sales Boost Sony Game Division Profit

Strong PS4 sales have seen Sony's Game division profits soar, though the company is planning to sell its PC business resulting in around 5,000 layoffs.

The news comes from Sony's third-quarter financial results, which covers the nine months ending December 31, 2013. They reveal the company's Game business made 442bn yen ($4.2bn), which is a 64 percent increase over the 268.5bn yen made the previous year. Though the main reason for this rise was the launch of the PS4, it was partly due to the depreciation of the yen; if currency remained constant, the Game division revenue only rose 33 percent.

Sales of the consoles were all lumped together, so we don't have an updated figure for the PS4 beyond the 4.2 million on December 28. However, combined sales of the PS4 and PS3 on December 31 were 7.8m units, while combined Vita and PSP sales for the quarter were 2m, down from the 2.7m sold the previous year.

In fact, Sony's Game division helped to lift the company's fortunes overall. The Game business drew in a profit of 18bn yen ($172m), which translated into profits of 27bn yen ($257m) for the whole company, up from a loss of 10.8bn yen ($106m) last year.

Despite this, large running costs for the company continue to eat into profits, so the company has announced the sale of its Vaio PC business to Japan Industrial Partners in a bid to combat this. It will instead focus on smartphones and tablets, both of which it says are seeing "significant increase" in terms of sales.

The sale of the PC business means the company will now longer plan, design or develop PC products once the sale is complete. Additionally, due to the fact the TV business won't return to profit by the end of this financial year, Sony will split it out into a wholly-owned subsidiary focusing on the high-end 4K market.

The result of these changes mean around 5,000 people are expected to loss their jobs by the end of the 2014 financial year, with 1,500 of those happening in Japan and 3,500 worldwide. The PlayStation division looks likely to escape the layoffs.

Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Junior Editor. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on Twitter.

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