While considerably less than the original goal of 2 million units they had set forth, Sony has fulfilled their revised goal of making one million PS3s available by the end of 2006. Still plagued with production issues and initially supply issues, now Sony faces the issue of keeping demand high in the face of Wii's successful launch and the 360's continued success. They are estimating they'll have 6 million units sold in under 3 months from now, which would be very impressive considering that they currently have just a tad over 1 million sold worldside. Despite the fact that Microsoft is approaching or possibly exceeding 10 million sold and Nintendo is around 3.5 million, Sony says they are not worried about catching up:
At this early stage with the next-generation consoles, Sony isn't concerned if rivals Microsoft or Nintendo end up selling more units because the overall industry is benefiting from very strong demand, Karraker said.
"Are we worried about strong sales of the Wii or Xbox 360? Not really," he stated. "It was a great year for the industry overall. With the tide all ships rise."
They did claim that 2007 would bring about many beneficial changes to the PS3, particularly the solution to the Blu-ray laser production issues. At the end of March we'll be able to see whether their estimates pan out or not.