Sony Sells 1m PS3s Across All PAL Regions
There's also word on the chances of the 20 GB and 80 GB models coming to Europe.
As the calls for price cuts on its console increase, Sony has revealed that it has sold more than one million PlayStation 3s in Europe and the rest of the PAL countries in less than 10 weeks.
David Reeves, the president of Sony's game division in Europe, said in a commentary article for MCV that this outpaced not only the PlayStation and the PlayStation 2 but also "our brothers and sisters in the competitive world" - Sony and Nintendo, in other words.
It was a close call. The Wii also sold around a million units in its first 10 weeks on the market, though those numbers are for Europe only.
Britons have come out in force in support of the new console. A full quarter of all the PS3s sold in the first 10 weeks went to people in the UK.
Reeves stressed that the sales figures are for consoles bought by customers and not shipped into stores, as is commonly reported.
Of those million new customers, around 460,000 have already signed up for the PlayStation Network. Reeves said he didn't think the service was competing with Xbox Live.
"I don't feel competing with Xbox Live; we feel we're in a different stadium," he said, adding that the debut of Home later this year would take Sony in a wholly different direction.
No prizes for guessing which games have been selling most briskly. According to Sony, the top software so far has been Resistance: Fall of Man (600,000 units since launch) and MotorStorm (500,000).
Europeans holding out for a different model of the PS3 can stop waiting. Reeves said it was "highly unlikely" that the cheaper, 20 GB PS3 released last year in the US and Japan would come to Europe.
He also said the 80 GB model recently released in South Korea would not be released in Europe in the foreseeable future. Reeves suggested this was because digital downloads are not as mature here.
Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo
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