Sony’s console still in third place; reaches milestone four months after Microsoft confirmed equivalent figures for Xbox 360.
When Sony released the PlayStation 3 towards the end of 2006, the Japanese hardware maker had given its American rival Microsoft a year’s head start. Since then, the Xbox 360 has been ahead in the sales race, though Nintendo’s Wii–released at almost the same time–rapidly established itself at the front of the pack. Sony today confirmed that the PlayStation 3 hit a significant sales milestone in March, with the 50 millionth PS3 being purchased on March 29.
The Xbox 360 took 9 months longer to reach that particular milestone; Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer took to the stage at January’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to confirm that his firm’s console had just sold 50 million units. As of December 2010, the Wii had sold 86 million units worldwide.
Sony also confirmed today that PlayStation Move hardware–the console’s set of motion-control peripherals–had sold 8 million units as of April 3, though it was not clear from the numbers provided if this was for complete systems or the total number of individual elements, such as extra controllers. Microsoft’s Kinect motion-sensing peripheral has outperformed Move hardware too, with life-to-date sales of 10 million units being confirmed last month.
These milestone came despite an apparent drop in US sales for the PS3 in 2010–Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter estimated a year-on-year sales decline of 12 percent for Sony’s console in 2010, compared to a 3 percent drop for the market as a whole. Sony also confirmed that as of March 20, the PlayStation Network had 75 million registered accounts.
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