Sony Computer Entertainment America has expressed that the company is “very pleased” with the recent NPD July hardware figures, despite sales of it’s PlayStation 3 console falling below expectations of industry analysts.
The PS3 sold 159,000 units of hardware for the month of July compared to Xbox 360’s 170,000, barely missing out on analyst predictions who forecast the console would outsell Microsoft’s competing machine for the first time since its launch in November 2006.
Mariam Sughayer, analyst relations manager for SCEA commented, "From a PlayStation perspective, coming out of E3 we were really anticipating a good reaction to our new hardware pricing announced on July 9, and we were obviously very pleased to see that PS3 sales increased with 159,000 units sold at retail, which puts us up 61 per cent over June numbers.”
Sughayer attributed the boost in sales to the application of the July price cut, in addition to growing anticipation for a number of exclusive software releases: "While I think a lot of that had to do with the new price, I also think there is a great deal of anticipation for the line up of games just around the corner”, she said.
"In fact, September should be definitely be a big month for us when you add in the launch of the new slimmer, lighter PSP.”
Source: GameIndustry.biz