Sales of the PlayStation 3 edges closer to the Xbox 360. A spokesperson has confirmed to IGN that Sony sold has sold 35.7 million units worldwide as of March 2010. The 2009 fiscal results from Sony also revealed that 13 million PS3 consoles were sold for the year. In comparison, the Xbox 360 has sold 40.2 million units world wide narrowing the gap to just 4.5 million units.
With the number of PS3s getting the Yellow Light of Death (YLOD) these days, its no surprise that gamers are worried about their precious consoles. Sony has now announced an affordable way to insure your PS3 and PSP for up to two additional years on top of the one year manufacturer’s warranty. The pricing includes all shipping charges and repairs, which are performed by PlayStation-trained service technicians at SCEA-authorized repair facilities.
Enterbrain have revealed that the PS3 has now sold over 5 million units in Japan since it was first launched back in November 11th 2006. Sales up to April 11th 2010 put the exact number at 5,001,598 units in the region. Enterbrain also listed the top selling games for the PS3 and unsurprisingly, Final Fantasy XIII has sold the most copies.
Research firm The Diffusion Group said that in the U.S., the PlayStation 3 has the highest percentage of broadband connected consoles when compared to Xbox 360 and Wii. In fact, 78% of PS3 users have their console connected to the Internet, compared to 73% of Xbox 360 owners and only 54% of Wii owners, according to Diffusion Group director of research Michael Greeson.
Retailer Amazon has offered a partial refund to a European PS3 owner following his complaint about the removal of the console’s OtherOS feature. Firmware 3.21 removed the ability to install other Operating Systems (such as Yellow Dog Linux) on the PlayStation 3, and such violated the European Law Directive 1999/44/EC. The partial refund was made to the customer without them having to return the console.
Despite Sony’s attempt to thwart hackers by removing the OtherOS functionality in the recent Firmware 3.21 update, two hackers, going by the names of JaicraB and DemonHades, have managed to extract the GameOS from the system and leak it publicly. What does mean? Now that the code for the GameOS is publicly available, others can reverse engineer the code and discover new exploits in the system.
Toshiba has announced a new 2.5″ SATA hard drives compatible with the PS3 (among other devices). The MK7559GSXP (750GB/pictured) will be available to purchase soon and will seriously boost your PS3 storage capacity. The 750GB model is the world’s most capacious 2.5-inch/9.5mm high HDD.
Today marks the PlayStation 3’s third birthday in Europe. The 60GB PS3 console was released exactly three years ago after suffering production delays. A lot has changed over the past three years, including over 35 firmware updates and lots of exclusive games including Heavy Rain, the multi-award winning Uncharted 2, Killzone 2 and inFamous.
According to the latest NPD figures, the PlayStation 3 has now sold approximately 11,761,000 units in the US till the end of February. The Xbox 360, on the otherhand, has broken the 19 million mark with approximately 19,383,900 units sold. At the end of last April, the Xbox 360 had double the install base of the PS3, with 14.9 million 360s and only 7.5 million PS3s in the NPD.
Now that Final Fantasy XIII has been out for a few weeks now, it was just a matter of time before a comparison video between the Xbox 360 version and PS3 version of the game would appear. We’ve found a short little video detailing the differences between the loading times for the two versions. The Xbox 360 version of the game is on three DVD discs, while the PS3 version is on a single dual-layer Blu-ray disc.
