Sony Computer Entertainment, the Japanese game giant, has finally met its goal of shipping one million PlayStation 3 video game consoles to North America by the end of 2006. In an announcement made by the company, it had stated goal of 2 million Play-Station 3s globally by the the end of 2006. Thus, the North American shipments contributed to about half of the total number, inspite of the production problems.
Sony corp. has a $30 billion share in the video game industry. The PS3s video game console can be acquired at a retail price costing $600 in the United States. Nintendo’s Wii retails for $250; and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 retails for $400. Sony had been the leader, with 70 percent of the global market, in the last generation of the console wars and done pretty good with the PlayStation 1 and 2, but its still a puzzle who will grab the market this time.
Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360 and Nintendo Co. Ltd.’s Wii are the main rivals of PS3. Microsoft sold 511,000 units of its Xbox 360 , while Nintendo sold 476,000 units of its new Wii video game console in the United States in November, last year. Microsoft, which gets most of its sales from North America, has made 10 million shipments of Xbox 360 by year end.
Jack Tretton, chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment America, which handles Sony’s PlayStation business says, “Within a week, at the most, a million units will be in (North American) consumers’ hands,” He further said that,”We are planning to ship 6 million PS3 consoles worldwide by the end of March 2007.We’re equally strong in all three markets Europe, North America, Japan. We can’t afford to sacrifice any one of them.”
Sony has ruled the video game console market with its two previous PlayStation models, PS1 and PS2, and has sold 200 million of them globally till date, but its launch of the PS3 was delayed due to limited supply to manufacturing glitches with blue laser diodes, the technological heart of the system’s high-capacity, high-definition Blu ray disk drive.
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