If they're upping their profit forecast does that mean they expect to ship more than their forecasted 17m consoles this year?

There is a TON of upfront costs related to launching a flagship console that would bore everyone to tears to list out here.

However, I believe that PS4 should cover those costs in 12-16 months from its launch date and enter a point of nearly raw profits from there,

Think of it like this : it cost you 10,000$ to start a business, and you begin selling widgits for $1/ea that cost you .90c/ea. You start selling them like bananas, but for the first X number of weeks/months/whatever your 10c/ea profit goes towards covering your initial and ongoing costs.

Sony has a huge number of pros this time around :

(1)- Simplified design with cheap sourcing of standard industry parts.
(2)- Bitcoin fever died out, dropping GDDR5 prices by .. a lot. A LOT. I just bought a 2GB PCIe GDDR5 GPU for a video editing system for $29AR. That would have been unthinkable not long ago. DDR3 memory will rise precipitously soon as DDR4 becomes a desktop memory standard. (just as it always has, DDR2 got expensive when DDR3 became mainstream, DDR1 got expensive when DDR2 became mainstream, etc/infinity)
(3)- Strong PS3 performance in many regions meant that transitioning to PS4 was possible without major new investments in marketing/infrastructure.
(4)- PS+ was built up from pretty humble beginnings into a world class service in advance of PS4's launch. Remember how people used to rave about XBL being the only real game in town? Those people are laughed at now if they try to say something like that, because we know better.
(5)- Strong/stable demand keeps the channel flowing. There are few things more costly than to overestimate or underestimate demand for your product, as catastrophic costs and missed opportunities can result. I think I'll make a thread about this actually.
(6)- Leading the industry makes everything feel downhill in costs. Publishers knock your door down to get their titles on your system, making exclusivity more costly to competitors, and cheaper for you.
(7)- Class-leading performance guarantees that the worst case scenario for multiplats would be parity, but in most cases there are minor to major advantages to players purchasing a game on your system vs. the competition. This will get MORE important over time, as many of the most avid gamers who buy the most games ALWAYS end up with most or all of the systems. But these hardcore multi-console owning players will be playing on YOUR console most of the time with few exceptions.
(8)- The early lead that PS4 has carved out presents a substantial market inertia in the world of twitter/facebook/gaming groups/friends/family information sharing.

Anyway, yes, PS4 is going to be crushingly profitable, and this will compound over time. It will absolutely dwarf PS2 in profitability overall. 

X1 and WiiU won't but i wouldn't count PS4 out yet..

It is actually pretty possible to be honest. And of course it will be more profitable than the PS3 the PS3 was a negative lol. The PS4 is probably already nore profitable than the PS3 lol. But hey focusing on profit is a VERY good thing for Sony.

Also playstation doesn't keep Sony alive heck it is not even the 1st, 2nd or 3rd most profitable part of Sony. It is more like the 4th or 5th,

They do sell more than just consoles. I could easily see PS+ being a $100+ million/year in profit as well (once the userbase is driven up, I have a hard time believing they don't make $10/sub/year).

Besides this, the PS2 was selling 15-22.5 million per year during its peak...indicating the whole brand was profiting approximately $50-$70 per console including accessories, games, etc.

So it really isn't ridiculous to say the PS4 sells 15-20 million in a year, and profits $68-$90 per console including accessories, games, etc.

If Sony can get the price to $299 for Fall 2015, $249 2016, and $199 beyond, I actually could easily see PS4 getting near or beyond PS2 levels.

I hope Nintendo stays healthy, but I don't expect anything that has the potential to unseat them as the leader for a long time.

I don't expect Microsoft to launch another console at all, but rather a gaming service and a standalone little box like the PSTV. 'Xbox' games on PC, streaming to TVs, etc.

Well to pass the PS2 profit levels gettting the price to $299 by next fall is not really something they just have to do. With more digital content to be bought/downloaded, PS+ and not selling the PS4 at a loss they would not need to drop the price down to that level until early 2016 and then $249 maybe fall 2017 in my opinion.

ofc.

im not talking about profit on the hardware alone

im talking about actual profit per console on the complete gaming divsion

the operating income is -18,8 billion yen for fiscal year 2013

2014 forecast is 20 billion yen (0,18billion $)

they need 150 billion yen to reach the 1.4 billion $ goal

But the end of an old gen (2013)  and the start of a new gen (2014) is expensive, so when those extra costs are away, and when they start releasing their upcoming games (games cost money to develop!) Then they'll see the profits rise. The PS2 actually lost 500 Million dollars in it's first year, but then made a shit ton more back later, so technically the PS4 is ahead of the PS2 currently.

Sounds like Sony is trying to make

the division appear good enough to sell.