Sony’s games unit said on Tuesday that it had shipped one million PlayStation 3s in Japan since the launch in November, as it struggles to meet its March target of selling six million consoles globally.
The company had reported previously that it had shipped one million PlayStation 3s in North America by the end of 2006, meaning that it has now shipped at least two million worldwide.
That makes the PS3 the fastest of the PlayStation consoles to reach cumulative shipment of two million units worldwide, Sony Computer Entertainment said in a statement.
On Monday, Nomura Securities said Sony was likely to miss its shipment target of six million PlayStation 3s by the end of the fiscal year to March.
Nomura said in a research note that weaker-than-expected sales in North America meant it now expected the company to sell 4,5-million PlayStation 3s in this fiscal year.
Sony had already been forced to delay the global launch of the PS3 by about six months until this November due to problems with the high-definition DVD player, giving the Xbox 360 a one-year head start.
Sony has long dominated the home video-game market and shipments of the original version and the PlayStation 2 have both topped 100-million each, but it now faces growing competition from Nintendo and Microsoft. – AFP