Pandora's box

While we all lament the PlayStation Vita’s current commercial woes, it’s worth remembering that the mighty PlayStation 3 once faced a similar predicament. There was a time when armchair analysts were calling for the console to be scrapped – but over the years, Sony has proved that the knee-jerk reactions were premature.

Indeed, the company has announced this morning that the system has shipped a whopping 70 million units to date. That’s a global number, which tracks consoles sold to stores rather than actual customers. However, you can guarantee that the sell-through number isn’t far behind – after all, retailers don’t stock up on hardware that they’re never going to sell.

The figure is correct as of 4th November 2012 – roughly six years after the platform first debuted in Japan. Incredibly, the system is pretty much on par with the Xbox 360, which had also sold 70 million units as of September 2012. Considering the PS3 launched later and at an infinitely more offensive price point, we reckon that Sony’s done a pretty good job of straightening out the mess that Ken Kutaragi left behind. Of course, both platforms are still miles behind the Wii’s impressive 97 million units tally.

Sony added that it has sold 15 million PlayStation Move motion controllers to date, a figure which is certainly not to be sniffed at. Furthermore, as of 30th September, there were 3590 games available for the PS3, of which 595 million have been sold.

Now if only the Vita could start posting some reasonable numbers, everything would be hunky dory.