Retailers sold through 3.8 million PlayStation 3 units worldwide over the course of the 2009 holiday season, 1.7 million of which were in the U.S., Sony announced today.
Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Kaz Hirai revealed the figures during a press conference held at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Hirai said the worldwide figure makes for a 76 percent year-on-year improvement, and the PS3's best holiday sales.
The company noted that it treated the "holiday season" as the period from November 26 (thus including the post-Thanksgiving "Black Friday" shopping day) to December 28 in North America, November 21 to December 25 in Europe and other PAL areas, and November 23 to December 27 in Japan and Asia.
Hirai also said PlayStation Network, its online service for PlayStation 3 and PSP, has reached a user base of 38 million accounts since its 2006 launch, and now spans 36 countries and 12 languages. Its content streaming service includes 2,700 movies and 16,000 television episodes, with a monthly download volume of 780 million pieces of content.
Sony plans to take that content service beyond its gaming devices. Next month it will extend PSN to Bravia TVs, Blu-ray devices, and "all Windows-enabled PCs."
Hirai touched on Sony as a conglomerate, admitting that "it's clear we need a more centralized organization structure to maximize the opportunities before us." As such, Sony has established the subsidiary Sony Network Entertainment, Inc., which Hirai leads.
"SNEI will drive vision, strategy, and execution for network services across the entire Sony group," Hirai said, claiming the group will be a "key driver for Sony's future growth."
With SNEI, "We establish a more intimate relationship with the customer, and increase the visibility and desirability of Sony products," he added.
There has long been the need to better coordinate and execute a cohesive master strategy
between all of Sony's many business units - but usually that is the job of the CEO . To set up a new division to do that sounds like it could become problematic. There is a reason why a ship has only one captain. It will be interesting to monitor how this approach to maximizing the synergies through what sounds like a committee approach works out. Maybe it will work. but it sounds inefficient...as though Sony has become too large for its own good. I hope I am proven wrong.
It is the concept of setting up an entire division that is not a profit center only a command and control center that is the problem. Why should Sony go to the expense of creating yet another division - especially one that produces no product and serves only to coordinate strategy? Unless the idea is to fold the reporting divisions into the new command and thus restructure. Ever heard of a captain in command of two ships at the same time, David?
Honestly Sony makes so much stuff at this point they cant have a single person set a direction. honestly your vision for video cameras is gonna be different than your vision for video games.
unified digital distribution of media could be a major boon for Sony media products (tvs, and the boxes that go with them). I don't think camcorders, semi-conductors and batteries are going to benefit much from digital distribution stratagems.
They Sony CEO isn't the captain of two ships he's the commander and chief of an entire company. He needs to delegate power to other units.
(Sony is too large for the CEO to take a traditional role. I suppose they are trying to find an alternative to breaking up the company in to smaller more manageable parts.)
between all of Sony's many business units - but usually that is the job of the CEO . To set up a new division to do that sounds like it could become problematic. There is a reason why a ship has only one captain. It will be interesting to monitor how this approach to maximizing the synergies through what sounds like a committee approach works out. Maybe it will work. but it sounds inefficient...as though Sony has become too large for its own good. I hope I am proven wrong.
Honestly Sony makes so much stuff at this point they cant have a single person set a direction. honestly your vision for video cameras is gonna be different than your vision for video games.
unified digital distribution of media could be a major boon for Sony media products (tvs, and the boxes that go with them). I don't think camcorders, semi-conductors and batteries are going to benefit much from digital distribution stratagems.
They Sony CEO isn't the captain of two ships he's the commander and chief of an entire company. He needs to delegate power to other units.
(Sony is too large for the CEO to take a traditional role. I suppose they are trying to find an alternative to breaking up the company in to smaller more manageable parts.)