Sony's long-awaited PlayStation 3 may have missed its global shipment target and been beaten in its home market by rival Nintendo's surprise hit Wii video game system, new figures show.
The results herald more bad news for Sony Corp., which is struggling to maintain its dominance in video gaming amid a three-way battle with Nintendo and the Xbox 360 of U.S.-based Microsoft.
Sony sold 466,716 PS3 units in Japan from its Nov. 11 domestic launch date to the end of December, according to a market survey released Tuesday by Japanese computer game publisher Enterbrain Inc. The figures fall short of the 1 million consoles Sony predicted it would ship domestically by year's end.