PSP Worldwide Shipments Hit 10 Million

Officials from Sony have announced that worldwide shipments of the PSP have reached 10 million units. This milestone has arrived following the portable console’s launch in December 2004 in Japan, in March 2005 in North America and this September in Europe, and Sony describes this as the “fastest penetration speed” of any PlayStation platform. The company has also indicated that 183 PSP software titles have been released so far over all territories, with a total of 19.6 million units of software shipped. More than 15 million UMD movies have also been manufactured and shipped by Sony. Broken down into regions, Asia (including Japan) has shipped 3 million units, North America 4.47 million, and Europe and other PAL regions 2.53 million. However, Sony’s use of statistics for shipped units can be a little confusing to some, since these figures do vary significantly to the amount of units thus far sold in stores. Nonetheless, citing shipment numbers for consoles is common practice within the game industry, and is carried out by all three major console manufacturers. According to recent statements from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, the PSP has sold "over a million units throughout the PAL territories", while chart analyst Media Create gives a figure of 1,910,205 units sold in Japan to date. As ever, figures for North America remain the most obscure, although recent estimates from The NPD Group put the figure at over 2 million units. Even allowing for additional sales from countries such as South Korea, the overall total figure for worldwide PSP sell-through is likely to be 50 to 70% of the current shipped figure, a still-impressive amount.