Sony Falls Far Short of PlayStation 3 Sales Target for Japan

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on January 11, 2007 - 8:37am.

Tokyo - Sony has fallen far short of its sales projections for the PlayStation 3 in its home country of Japan, The New York Times reported, citing sales data from Japanese market research firm Enterbrain.

Sony had hoped to sell one million PlayStation 3 consoles in Japan last year. The device went on sale on Nov. 11, but sold just 534,336 consoles through Jan. 7, according to Enterbrain.

Rival Nintendo, on the other hand, sold 1.14 million of its competing next-generation Wii console in Japan between Dec. 2 and Jan. 7, while Microsoft has sold just 311,053 Xbox 360 consoles in Japan since December 2005, Enterbrain reports.

"The new PlayStation could take a while to catch on with consumers," Enterbrain president Hirokazu Hamamura told The Times. "But this is a machine with enormous potential."

Sony said this week that it met its goal of shipping one million consoles to the U.S. by the end of 2006, and reiterated last week that it still expects to ship six million PlayStation 3 consoles worldwide in 2007.