Sony reported that net income for the 12 months ended March 31 almost tripled to a record 369.4 billion yen, beating its 340 billion yen forecast.

For the full-year, operating profit grew more than fivefold to 374.5 billion yen, helped by smaller game losses and one-off gains from asset sales.

In total, across the group, sales and operating revenue hit 8.87 trillion yen, a rise of 6.9 percent on the previous year.

PlayStation unit sales rose 26.3 percent year-on-year to 1.284 trillion yen, narrowing the division’s losses from 232.3 billion yen last year to 124.5 billion. The company attributed the fall in losses primarily to the reduction of PS3 hardware production costs, as well as increased PS3 software sales and PSP hardware sales.

During the year ended March 31, Sony sold 9.24 million PS3s globally, 13.89 million PSPs and 13.73 million PS2s. On the software front, 57.9 million PS3 games were sold, as were 55.5 million PSP titles and 154 million PS2 games.

For the current fiscal year ending March 2009, Sony forecast that sales will hit 9 trillion yen, up one percent, but that operating profit will fall 22 percent to 290 billion yen.