Rising PlayStation 4 hardware and software sales have eased Sony's games and networks services division through the first quarter of this financial year. 

According to the company's results for the quarter ended June 30, the division -- which handles Sony's video game-related operations -- saw an increase in sales, operating revenue, and operating income. 

Drilling down, sales were up by 14.5 percent year-over-year, rising to 330.4 billion yen ($3.2 billion), an upturn Sony attributes to a "significant increase in PS4 software sales" and, in particular, the strong performance of Uncharted 4.

Operating income for the division rose to 44.0 billion yen ($427 million), which is 24.6 billion yen ($239 million) more than it made at this stage last year. 

Again, Sony pointed to rising software sales and hardware price cuts as reasons for that upward shift, revealing it sold 3.5 million PlayStation 4s this quarter -- taking lifetimes sales way beyond the 40 million mark. 

Across all divisions, sales fell by 10.8 percent year-over-year to 1.6 trillion yen ($15.6 billion), while profits for the quarter also dropped to 21.2 billion yen ($205 million) from 82.4 billion yen ($800.5 million).

As Sony notes, however, the negative impact of the recent Kumamoto earthquakes was approximately 34.2 billion yen ($332 million), including opportunity losses.

Due to the appreciation of the yen, Sony has downwardly revised its company-wide sales forecast by 400 million yen, and is now anticipating 7.4 trillion yen ($71.8 billion) in sales by the end of the financial year.

End-of-year profits are still expected to reach May's revised target of 80 billion yen ($728 million).