Categories: Gaming

PlayStation 3 surpasses Xbox 360 in number of shipped units for first time

As Sony officially ends production of the PlayStation 2 and all eyes shift towards the two big next-generation game consoles expected to be announced and possibly made available before the end of the year, the PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720, Sony’s current console, the PlayStation 3, is making headlines of its own.

Despite being released one year after its main rival, the Xbox 360, and the network’s disastrous extended outage after an “external intrusion” in Spring 2011, Sony’s PlayStation 3 now looks like it has finally overtaken Microsoft’s console in terms of the number of units shipped.

In its six-year history, never before has the PlayStation 3 shipped more units than the Xbox 360. That was, of course, until December 2012 as Games Industry International reports, quoting a substantial forecast report by International Data Corporation (IDC), that worldwide shipments of the PlayStation 3 reached 77 million units compared to 76 million Xbox 360 units.

These figures denote the number of consoles shipped by their respective manufacturers and not device sales numbers to the end user. However, as both consoles are well-established, it’s unlikely that either manufacturer would produce units far in excess of consumer demand.

Nevertheless, this is a welcome boost for Sony as it is expected to announce its forthcoming console at E3 2013 gaming expo in June of this year – as is Microsoft with its own forthcoming console.

Also in the report, titled Worldwide Video Game Entertainment Console Hardware and Packaged Software 2012-2016 Forecast, is a prediction that Nintendo’s newest console, the Wii U, will “find an audience” and reach 50 million global shipments by the end of 2016. It’s thought that just over three million Wii U units have been sold to date since the console’s staggered launch in November and December of 2012.

Albizu Garcia

Albizu Garcia is the Co-Founder and CEO of Gain -- a marketing technology company that automates the social media and content publishing workflow for agencies and social media managers, their clients and anyone working in teams.

Recent Posts

Beyond Paperwork: How empathy is starting to matter in the financial industry

The so-called Great Wealth Transfer is no longer a distant prediction. It is estimated that…

9 hours ago

WEF publishes blueprint to monetize everything in nature

The WEF claims that Larry Fink & Andre Hoffmann's work on the board 'do not…

1 day ago

Fabian Society outlines how govt can ‘upscale circular economy’

How long until the wolf sheds its sheepskin? Fabians are sleepwalking society towards the 'own…

4 days ago

AI reasoning and the infinite puzzle of Borges’ Library of Babel

Many people have the intuition that an LLM (Large Language Model, e.g. ChatGPT) doesn't really understand…

1 week ago

UK’s DARPA-inspired ARIA opens ‘Engineering Ecosystem Resilience’ research opportunity

ARIA's opportunity space for engineering ecosystem resilience follows a global trend of public and private…

1 week ago

Healthcare providers now have unprecedented data insights into the patient journey as PurpleLab® acquires KAID Health

In the U.S., we’re seeing an incredible growth of the healthcare analytics market, with the…

1 week ago