Sony has revealed that its flagship gaming console, PlayStation 3, has eclipsed the two million sales barrier in the UK, with PlayStation Portable sales in the region standing at three million.
Despite this, senior vice president and managing director for SCE UK, Ray Maguire, admitted that the platform holder is going through a rough patch at the moment, though remained confident sales will grow by a further one million over the next 12 months.
"I think it’s a tough time for everyone," Maguire told GI.biz. "Probably more so in the UK, because we’re hit by the effects of currencies – euro, pound, yen and dollar – and the weakness of the pound is definitely an issue that affects us more than the rest of SCEE.”
"We have to do as much in this office as we can to make sure that we can build on the success we had last year in terms of the units we sold, great IPs that we had to bring to market.”
"This year we’ve got even more, even better product to put out there – but trading is difficult, it’s really tough. Just credit insurance – credit limits are going to be challenging for the whole of the year.”
"These are things which are completely out of Sony’s control – it’s about the environment in which we trade, but we have to be responsible, we have to do what we need to do to make sure we give back to the shareholders what they need."
Maguire went on to defend the PS3’s current price tag, observing that the machine has clocked up roughly one million units per year since its launch in the UK in 2007, believing the choice to position the console as a premium product was “the right strategy to have.”
"For any product to gain an installed base it needs two things – a great product, and a good price," he explained. "We’ve clearly got the best product you can get, so there’s a big tick in that box. The price – it’s a premium product, so therefore it costs a premium price, and that does give us issues in terms of the expected sell-through that analysts and the media want, but actually when you look at it in isolation: close to a million units in a year which is really tough, at a premium price, actually shows that’s a great number.”
"If you look at the RRP that we’ve had out there for 2 million units, and compare it to PlayStation One and PlayStation 2, it’s amazing that we’ve got to this kind of level. Actually, I’m really pleased with that – it does show that the premium product was the right strategy to have.”