Sony Says 687,300 PS3s Sold Meets 1M Goal

In a statement to BetaNews this afternoon, a spokesperson for Sony Computer Entertainment of America said that NPD Group estimates of 687,300 PlayStation 3 consoles sold in the US - a figure which Sony did not deny - effectively meets the company's most recently stated sales goal of one million units in North America.

"As we announced on January 8, 2007, we met our previously stated goal of 1M units in North America by December 31, 2006," the spokesperson told BetaNews. The spokesperson goes on to point out that NPD Group's numbers fail to take into account units sold in Canada (which Sony estimates at 90,000), units sold in the final week of the year (whose sales figures Sony estimates to be 170,000) [CORRECTION: By "last week," we've now ascertained that Sony meant "the last week of the year 2006," not "this past week"], plus an estimated "units at retail that are in transit or on their way to from the warehouse to the store" (approximately 100,000 units).

Sony's addition, which would encompass the entire continent and include units shipped though not yet sold retail, would place its total at just under 1.05 million units wholesale.

With those adjustments having been made, Sony today popped open the champagne corks and began celebrating. In a statement early this afternoon, Sony CEA President Jack Tretton proclaimed, "If there was ever any doubt about the power of the PlayStation brand in the US, the December NPD data should quickly quell it. Not only did consumers drive records for PLAYSTATION 3, they also validated the excellent value represented by PlayStation 2 and the entertainment versatility of PSP. These sales figures bode very well for the company heading into 2007."

The PlayStation 2 figures to which Tretton refers include NPD's estimate of 1.4 million units sold to consumers last month. For this citation, Sony did not make adjustments or corrections to NPD's estimate.

Sony's statement to BetaNews came in response to our report earlier today, which noted also that Microsoft Xbox 360 sales in the US were estimated at 1.1 million units, for a lifetime figure of 4.5 million units. Microsoft's estimate of 10.4 million units shipped is apparently a worldwide estimate specific to Xbox 360.