Sony Computer Entertainment America analyst relations manager Mariam Sughayer has claimed that Sony is “very pleased” with the July NPD results for console hardware sales in the U.S., after the published figure showed the Xbox 360 still outselling the PlayStation 3 despite a new price cut. Analysts such as Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter and Lazard's Colin Sebastian had predicted that the price cut for the PlayStation 3 in the U.S., and negative publicity surrounding the Xbox 360 hardware reliability, would see it outsell Microsoft’s console during July. Writing on the PlayStation.Blog website Sughayer expressed excitement for the general upturn for the whole video games market in July, which rose by 37 percent on the same time last year. In regards to the PlayStation 3 specifically she commented: “Coming out of E3 we were really anticipating a good reaction to our new hardware pricing and we were obviously very pleased to see that PS3 sales increased with 159K units sold at retail for the month of July, which puts us up 61% over June numbers.” Sughayer went on to suggest that September would be a particularly big month for Sony with new PlayStation 3 titles Warhawk, Lair and Heavenly Sword and the launch of the newly redesigned PSP Slim and Lite.