Amazing accomplishment, all these graphs and statistics in this thread show why Playstation is the king of video gaming!

So Sony for the last two years limited a little shipments to lower the number of units on shelves, channel and warehouses, this could explain why despite sales above expectations they have left shipping forecasts for the current FY unchanged. Anyhow I suspect that given the results they eventually could end up shipping more, probably up to 18M, while still selling more than shipped and reducing on shelves numbers anyway.

I doubt that....

They revised to 17.5M for the fiscal year. And have so far shipped 15.2M. So for Q4 they they will be shipping 2.3M which will be added t the 2.6M already in the channels.  

So basically from january to march there will be like 4.9M PS4s in circulation.

If anything I expect them to make anther really low shipment projection total fr FY 2019 of something like 15M.

The profits of PS4 show that simplicity is king. They went for custom power and some mind blowing new tech with PS3 and all it did was cause everyone headaches who tried to develop for it and cost them gazillions of dollars. They went simple with PS4 and everyone was happier. Hell the PS3 uniqueness is costing them to this day with BC not being available (not as much as some would claim but I imagine some have not bitten because of it). Hopefully they can overcome it with this new tech they patented for BC on PS5

Yep.  With PS2 was the Emotion Engine and the GS, very complex architecture, if you also add the embedded 4MB of D-Ram...but in the end they won; it was a nightmare coding for it in the beginning;  with PS3 again a special architecture, Cell and RSX; finally Sony understood that it's better to be original just with the software, and keep the hardware down to earth :D

How much is Software totals at now then? is it over 900m yet?

More than 900 million easily, and logically we will have the updated software numbers in the next report on March 31 :)

Yep.  I'm glad they are sticking to this strategy from now on, too.  While custom HW worked for the PS1 and PS2, they shot too high with the PS3.  It was inevitable, I suppose.  When you make your own custom chipset it just adds so much to the R&D cost, as well as manufacturing costs, since foundries have to be equipped to make those special chips.  Which is crazy when you think about the goal of the PS3, to just plays games well.  Now, HW is much cheaper to make and you become profitable on HW much quicker.  I believe it took them about a year to start making a profit on HW, where the PS3 took 3 or more. 

I'm hoping that PS5 is B/C with all 4 systems.  PS4 if obvious, since it is an easy way to transition PS4 owners to PS5.  PS1 and PS2 needs to be, as well, since there are so many Classics on the store that will just be sitting there for no reason, as people will have nothing to play them on.  Sony has already made a great PS2 emulator for PS4, so I'm guessing it will be even better on PS5.  They already had a great PS1 emulator in the PS3, as well.  I wouldn't think it would take too much work to get it running on the PS5.  PS3 is obviously the most difficult, because of the complexities of the Cell CPU.  But, Ryzen is supposed to be a beast, so I would imagine it could handle it.

Personally, I'm looking forward to what their patent seems to point to, remasters via emulation.  Higher res textures and, hopefully, higher poly models for PS1 and PS2 games would be incredible.  If you could buy a hi-res pack for them, maybe $2.99 for PS1 and $4.99 for PS2, I would buy them.  I'm sure only a few games would use it at first, but if Sony can show that it would be a good revenue stream for devs/pubs, I wouldn't be surprised to see them put a 2-5 man team on "remastering" these games.  Though, really, if Sony's emulator does just what the PS2 emulator on PS4 one does for both systems, rendering at 1080p (maybe 4K this time) and AA for jaggies, I'd be happy.

Gameboy is missing