SCEA has announced that it has sold over 25 million PlayStation 2 consoles in North America to date, with 2.6 million of them enabled for online play and a million gamers using PS2 online gaming services. "While our competitors strive to meet the new standards we"ve laid before them, our focus remains fixed on driving the momentum of our platform and the industry forward," commented SCEA president Kaz Hirai. In other words, this is Sony"s distinctly unconcerned response to recent announcements from Nintendo (which stated this week that the GameCube has sold out in many retailers in the USA, with emergency supplies being shipped in from overseas) and Microsoft (which has been celebrating having 750,000 Xbox Live users, with a target of a million by June).
Sales of the PlayStation 2 are expected to drop off during 2004 as the console is now widely believed to have passed its peak selling period. However, sales of software on the platform are forecast to remain strong by most market watchers, while the uptake of the company"s online offering is likely to grow as new online titles arrive on the market and long-term PS2 owners seek new uses for their existing console.