Sony seems to have hit a home run with its new console model, as around half-a-million units of the PS3 "Slim" have been sold worldwide last week according to preliminary data from VGChartz.
The number represents over a 400 percent increase in sales week-on-week and is a definite shot in the arm for a console manufacturer that has been in jeopardy as of late with declining sales and poor quarterly reports. In its first three days on sale in Japan, the console sold 150,252 units, which dwarfs the 88,000 sold immediately following the PS3’s initial launch. In the UK, PS3 sales are up over 1,000 percent! This recovery can be credited to the new, more affordable price of the PS3 at $299 that began just one week prior to the "Slim" model’s release.
Software for the PS3 also saw strong increases as many PS3 versions of multi-platform games outsold the Xbox 360 counterparts comfortably.
VGChartz is reporting with a fair amount of certainty that the official number, when the data is fully compiled, will be somewhere between 450,000 and 550,000 units sold.
[Additional reporting by Eddie Inzauto]
