Ben-DutkaToday, SCEA has officially announced the PlayStation brand hardware retail sales, plus the emergence of the already-predicted Skype for the redesigned PSP.
Total PlayStation hardware sales hit 3.9 million units in North America between Black Friday and December 31; that number includes all three major systems in the PS repertoire: the PS3, PS2 and PSP. PS3 sales surged to 1.2 million units during that span, and Sony of course mentioned the recent decision by Warner Bros. to exclusively back the Blu-Ray high-definition format. Obviously, this is only going to help future PS3 sales, and could indicate the final nail in the coffin for Toshiba's competing format, HD-DVD.
At the same time, SCEI (Sony Computer Entertinmant, Inc.) has revealed they plan to introduce Skype for the new slim and light PSP. It's a great piece of communications software and there are currently over 246 million registered users, so this is an excellent new feature for Sony's handheld. The PSP had an eventful 2007 – that redesign was huge – and with the addition of Skype and more "AAA" titles in 2008, we predict even better PSP sales in the future. All in all, not a bad way to start the week for Sony.
