NPD hardware figures for the month of July reveal that sales of Sony’s PlayStation 3 console have failed to surpass those of Microsoft’s competing Xbox 360, missing forecasts previously set by a number of top industry analysts.
Despite this, the recent price cut in North America did help Sony’s next-generation console break the 100,000 monthly barrier, shipping a total of 159,000 units, lagging only slightly behind the Xbox 360’s 170,000 mark.
Both PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable continue to perform healthily, selling a total of 222,000 and 214,000 units each, respectively, with Nintendo leading the pack with 425,000 Wii units sold.
Hardware sales in total for July rose by 77.4 per cent to reach USD 380.8 million, USD 286 million of which were attributed to home console alone, with the remainder represented handheld systems. Total industry sales reached USD 925.9 million, increasing by 37 per cent from the previous year.