14 DAY TRIAL // Sony is claiming that the week which ended on November 29 has seen the PlayStation 3 home gaming consoles sell more than 440,000 units in the United States. The Thanksgiving holiday is traditionally regarded as the start of the holiday season and a lot of people flock to stores in order to take advantage of a variety of deals, most of them heavily discounted, targeting everything from clothes to gaming consoles.
Sales of hardware also tend to have a spike in the week immediately after Thanksgiving and companies like Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft are quick to point out their performance during this period in order to built momentum for their products.
Patrick Seybold, who is the senior corporate communications director at Sony, stated that “The 2009 holiday season got off to an amazing start for PlayStation, with all key retailers showing a significant increase for PS3, PSP and key holiday titles over Black Friday and the holiday weekend.”
The PlayStation 3 is said to have been favored by players because of its power, the library of videogames available for it and because of the capabilities of the PlayStation Network. Seybold added that “In today's economy, consumers are drawn to items that offer the most value for their money, making the PS3 an ideal choice for those who want a comprehensive gaming and entertainment system all in one package.”
The PlayStation 3 seems to be the big winner among the home consoles in the last six months of 2009. Sony launched a new version of the device, called the Slim, which uses less power and is also smaller while offering the same computational power and slashed the price to match that of the Xbox 360 Elite. The PS3 has dominated hardware charts in the United States since the move and is poised to perform well in November and December.