Electronics

Sony’s PS3 enjoys late jump in sales

(FT) - A hefty price cut and a new model PlayStation3 appeared to have paid off for Sony, as the company revealed that it had sold 3.8m of the games consoles worldwide in the final five weeks of 2009. This is a 76 per cent increase on last year and the best holiday sales the PS3 has had.

The company said that its PlayStation Network, the online gaming service that can be accessed from the PS3, PlayStation Portable or by personal computer, now has 38m registered accounts.

The announcement comes a day after rival Nintendo said that it had sold more than 3m Wii consoles in the US in December, a 40 per cent increase on the previous year. The sales figures allayed fears that games console companies were set for a lacklustre Christmas as the console market matures.

Sony’s figures echoed research from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association, the UK industry body, which found that the PS3 console was the star performer of 2009, increasing unit sales in the UK by 2 per cent.

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