Officials from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) have confirmed to Gamasutra that press reports that the PlayStation 3 has now sold over one million units in the UK are accurate.
Apart from confirming that the figure refers to units sold, rather than shipped to retail, the company was reluctant to offer any other details or statements – although a major local press event was mentioned as being scheduled for later in the month.
This means that the PlayStation 3 has reached the one million unit mark a month or more sooner than the PlayStation 2, which took 50 weeks to reach the same figure. This compares to 60 weeks for the Xbox 360 and 38 weeks for the Wii – the latter of which is the current record for the UK.
As of January 1st 2008, Sony’s own figures, which likely refer to shipped rather than sold consoles, put the worldwide total for the console at 10.49 million units. This suggests that the UK market currently accounts for around 10 percent of Sony’s PlayStation 3 business.
Recent
hardware estimates revealed by Electronics Arts suggest that 2.8 million PlayStation 3 have been sold in Europe as a whole, with the company expecting the console to sell between 5.0 and 6.0 million units in 2008 – compared to 1.5 to 2.5 million for the Xbox 360.
