Sony have announced that they have reached the stunning 40 million mark for shipped units of Playstation 2, their blockbuster console. Considering they announced the 30 million mark on May 5th this means that the company has managed to push 10 million plus units over the summer season. The breakdown of the numbers gives the impression of a well balanced demand, worldwide, for the console with, 10.97 million of the units shipped to Japan, 17.01 million to the United States and 12.06 million to Europe.
Sony have even more ambitious targets, aiming to ship 20 million consoles globally in the year to March 2003. These new figures show that Sony are widening the gap from their opposition, Microsoft and Nintendo, rather than having them eat away at its lead, even though its two rivals were hailed as the future of the console market.
According to Japanese sources, Microsoft have sold 274,000 Xbox's since debuting in Japan on February 22, while Nintendo has sold 1.565 million GameCubes in Japan since its launch in September 2001.
Microsoft are said to be preparing for a Japanese counter-offensive and have prepared an impressive presentation line-up for the Tokyo Game Show which begins this week. The U.S. giant's arsenal for the invasion includes 18 games of which , five are new titles and two are online games. Microsoft seem to believe that the only way out, of their uncomfortable last place in the console wars, is through a well structured online strategy.
The new titles to be announced will include Battlefield Pizza Girl a well kept secret with an uncomfortable title, the fighting game The Wild Rings and the very Japanese sounding Natural Ultimate Digital Experiment (N.U.D.E.) in which the player manages a girl, in order to assist her in developing her own character and emotions.
The online games The two online games are True Fantasy Live Online, the classic adventure game taking place in a fantasy world and a fishing game called Fishing Live Online.
Sony and Nintendo will have such a prominent presence in the show but this has been their usual policy, leaving the, imported, aggressive strategies to Microsoft.
Microsoft's XBox Live online service will begin trials in Japan in late October with 5,000 players.
The importance Microsoft places on the success of their online services can be better understood by considering the fact that XBox is the only of the three rival consoles that will not offer 56k support.