Sony today released its fourth quarter and full-year earnings for the fiscal period ended March 31, and thanks to increased sales of the PlayStation 3 (and a reduction of PS3 losses), the group as a whole saw Q4 profit of $277 million while full-year profit nearly tripled to a record $3.5 billion. LCD TVs, digital cameras and Vaio computers also contributed to the bottom line.

Although the PS3 business has yet to record a profit for Sony, the company did sell 9.24 million units of the console in the last fiscal year. For the current fiscal year (ending March 2009), the company is projecting sales of another 10 million units.

Currently the PS3 stands at 12.85 million units sold worldwide, compared to 24.45 million Wiis and 19 million Xbox 360s.

Thanks to the PS3 sales boost, Sony's game division saw sales climb 26.3 percent to 1.28 trillion yen (over $12 billion). The net loss at the division was narrowed to 124.5 billion yen (around $1.2 billion). This was helped by a decrease in the cost of PS3 production and an increase in the sale of software. Sony sold 57.9 million units of PS3 software.

As for Sony's other PlayStation platforms, the PSP continues to improve with total hardware sales climbing more than 4 million units to 13.89 million sold. PSP software saw a slight increase to 55.5 million units. The aging PS2 saw its hardware total decline by almost 1 million units to 13.73 million, and PS2 game sales really took a plunge, falling by 39.5 million units to 154 million.

For the current fiscal year ending next March, Sony did say that it's expecting the game segment as a whole to record a positive operating income, despite an expected decline in the PS2 business. "...the profitability of the segment will improve significantly due to hardware cost reductions and an enhanced line-up of software titles in the PS3 business," the company stated.