Sony Claims Record PS3 Sales For Europe

Sony Computer Entertainment president Kazuo Hirai has claimed that around 1.2 million PlayStation 3 consoles have been sold in Europe for the five week period ended December 31st 2007, equaling the number sold during the same period in the U.S. As before, there is some confusion as to whether Hirai’s comments refer to the number of consoles sold to customers or shipped to retailers, but the figure is exactly the same as that reported for the U.S. from November 23th to December 31st, 2007. As usual, there are is no regular independent hardware sales information for Europe, for any of the consoles. “We want to promote games only available for PlayStation 3,” said Hirai in a Bloomberg Television interview. “The introduction of the 40-gigabyte model is in line with that strategy.” In the same report, analysts predict that Sony will not reach its goal of selling 11 million PlayStation 3s by the end of the company’s financial year in March. Instead analysts expect the company to sell only 8 million units, just 73 percent of the target. The same analysts expect the Xbox 360 to sell 9.1 million units worldwide and the Wii 19 million. Although Sony chief financial officer Nobuyuki Oneda has admitted that the company may miss its sales target, Hirai still holds out hope. "We haven't made any conclusion whether we have to give it up," he said. "It depends on how aggressively dealers buy our PS3 inventory."