Sony "very pleased" with July sales figures

SCEA's analyst relations manager Mariam Sughayer has said the company is "very pleased" with the recent NPD sales figures for July - although sales of the PS3 still lag behind Microsoft's Xbox 360 console.

Earlier this month industry analysts weighed in with sale predictions, incorrectly expecting the PlayStation 3 to outsell the Xbox 360 for the first time since release in North America.

The PlayStation 3 sold 159,000 units in July, with Microsoft selling 170,000 Xbox 360 units. July was the first month that the recent USD 100 price cut on the PS3 would have been reflected in the data.

"From a PlayStation perspective, coming out of E3 we were really anticipating a good reaction to our new hardware pricing announced on July 9, and we were obviously very pleased to see that PS3 sales increased with 159,000 units sold at retail, which puts us up 61 per cent over June numbers," said Sughayer in the PlayStation.blog.

Sughayer believes that the price cut helped boost sales, aided by the building anticipation of new software due before Christmas.

"While I think a lot of that had to do with the new price, I also think there is a great deal of anticipation for the line up of games just around the corner."

"In fact, September should be definitely be a big month for us when you add in the launch of the new slimmer, lighter PSP," she added.