PlayStation 4 Sells 1 Million Units Just 24 Hours After Release
The PlayStation 4 gaming console sold 1 million units just 24 hours after its release in the U.S. and Canada.
The news will have delighted executives at Sony, who are placing big hopes in the console to kick-start a revival of its consumer electronics business. The head of Sony Computer Entertainment, which oversees the PlayStation, has said that "sales remain very strong in North America."
"We expect continued enthusiasm as we launch the PlayStation 4 in Europe and Latin America on November 29," he said.
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Sony aims to sell 5 million PS4 units by the end of its fiscal year that ends on March 31. The company also hopes to move more units than its fiercest competitor, Microsoft, who will release the Xbox One on Nov. 22. Analyst Colin Sebastian predicted that Sony will ship 2.5 million to 3 million PS4s by the end of the fourth quarter in North America.
The PS4 has a significant advantage over the Xbox as it is $100 cheaper at $399 for the base model.
Sony unveiled the PlayStation 4 in February of this year. The new system is powered by an eight-core X86 AMD "Jaguar" CPU and a 1.84 Teraflop AMD Radeon graphics engine. It also has 8GB of GDDR5 memory and will use a hard drive for storage instead of SSD.
Like the PS3, the PS4 has a Blu-ray drive that can also play DVDs and will be backwards compatible with PS3 games, and eventually will be able to play PS and PS2 titles, according to Sony.
Microsoft's Xbox One will be priced at $499 for the based model. Both consoles offer improved graphics for realistic effects and processors that allow for faster game play. They will also have their own share of exclusive video game titles.
