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PlayStation fans in Japan queued anxiously last weekend in an attempt to secure themselves a new PlayStation 3, Sony’s latest offering in the console wars.
Sony sold 88,400 PlayStation 3 consoles over the weekend in Japan according to Japanese magazine Famitsu.
The number falls around halfway between the 100,000 launch-unit target Sony was aiming for and the 80,000 figure reported in the Nikkei Shimbun prior to launch.
The best selling games were Namco Bandai’s Ridge Racer 7 and Gundam: Target in Sight, both of which sold around 30,000 units.
The near-instant total depletion of hardware stock has led to a huge number of Internet auctions for so-called “used” PS3 consoles spring up, some with asking prices more than twice that charged by retail.
Some web-based importers have decided not to sell the console to clients in the European Union after Sony enjoyed success in its attempts to stifle Hong Kong-based Lik-Sang, which went out of business recently.
Plus, Kaz Hirai, president and chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment America, said recently that more than 8,000 PS2 games will play on the PS3, and that so-called “firmware” upgrades will address problems found with about 200 games since sales of the PS3 started last week in Japan.
“We are aiming for perfect compatibility. Our goal is 100 percent compatibility,” he said in an interview.
“We are trying to get there as quickly as possible.”
A Sony spokesman said the glitches in the 200 games in question were related mostly to audio problems and conflicts caused by the fact that the game controllers, held in users hands as they direct the action on the screen, differ from one PlayStation generation to the next. For example, buttons found on a PS One may not cause the same action on a PS3.
Source:
GamesIndustry.biz,
Yahoo! News
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