Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has issued a statement claiming 1 million PlayStation 3 systems have been sold in Europe, since its release on March 23 of this year.
SCEE CEO David Reeves also claimed in an editorial for British trade magazine MCV that these figures represented actual sell-through, rather than just the number of units shipped to stores. He also stated that around 2 million units of Sony-published software had been sold, with 600,000 copies of Resistance: Fall of Man selling in Europe, and just over 500,000 for Motorstorm. “Early last week we went through the one million mark on the PS3,” he wrote. “And we did that in nine and a half weeks. That was faster than both the PS2 and PS One. And I think th at the analysts out there will also realize that it’s faster than our brothers and sisters in the competitive world.”
The PlayStation 3 has been the target of criticism regarding its slow sales in comparison to the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii, and even its aged sibling, the Playstation 2. Although the console was released in November 2006 in Japan, it has yet to reach the million mark in that country, selling just over 910,000 units so far. According to NPD data, as of April the PlayStation 3 had broke the 1.3 million mark in North America.
No independent hardware sales figures are available for the European market, so it’s impossible to determine the implication of these figures, or how the PlayStation 3 sales compare with those of the Xbox 360 and Wii. It is known that Sony had 1 million of the consoles available in Europe when the system launched, and no reports of PlayStation 3 hardware shortages have ever been made.
