3) Sony Corporation
$2.6 billion
Sony’s overall company performance was less than impressive last year, but PlayStation itself performed superbly. Never before has the video game industry been so important to Sony’s bottomline, with strong software and hardware sales contributing a disproportionately high amount to its overall earnings. Sony reported overall revenue at $67 billion, with the gaming division responsible for over $14 billion of that total. And more importantly, gaming related profit rose by $1.1 billion over last year.
Impressive sales of its PS4 console are at the heart of Sony’s record haul in fiscal 2017. The console is steamrolling its competition with 20 million sold last year, pushing lifetime sales beyond 60 million units. By comparison, Sony sold 17 million units in 2015.
Software sales were also cited as a primary factor for the record year. Although Sony did not highlight individual software numbers, the exceptional performance of titles such as Uncharted 4 was surely a factor. A late flurry of games toward the end of fiscal 2017 – Nioh, NieR, and Horizon Zero Dawn – helped Sony to a achieve a record Q4. The publisher also made special mention of strong digital and network sales, forecasting them to be an increasingly influential contributor moving forward to fiscal 2018.
