MCVUK interviews Sony’s David Reeves and has some excellent sales news.

“In December we sold just over a million PlayStation 3s during the month,” he told MCV. “That’s across all PAL territories and that’s a sell-through figure.

Over a million from Europe alone? That’s equal to or above Japan and USA combined! NPD sales for USA were 797.6K and MediaCreate sales for Japan total approximately 212.7K for a USA/Japan total of 1.01 million.

Remember this chart? PS3 would look much better if I could get good Europe numbers to include.

“We don’t often mention the competition, but I will give you some interesting data: In terms of installed base in some of our major markets, such as France, Spain, Germany and Italy – plus some distributor territories in smaller markets like Switzerland – our current cumulative installed base is now higher than Xbox 360.

“It has not yet reached that in the UK. But the team here expect to overtake the installed base of Xbox 360 across all PAL territories in late summer. It’s also worth mentioning that last week we outsold Xbox 360 in PAL territories by a ratio of three to one.”

Great news all around!

UPDATE: In negative news, analysts predict that Sony will fall short of their PS3 sales target for fiscal year 2007. Sony previously claimed that they would be able to sell 11 million PS3 units to retailers/dealers during FY’07 (4/1/2007-3/31/2008), however analysts are predicting that they will only reach 8 million.

UPDATE 2: To clarify the 11 million Sony target and 8 million analyst estimate (according to bloomberg): these numbers only include FY’07 sales. They do NOT include PS3 sales before April 1, 2007. These particular numbers are also referring to sales to retailers and dealers, NOT complete sell through to customers.

I got this for playing around with Ubuntu 7.10 Linux on the PS3 and writing messages & browsing the web in the XMB. It works quite well actually. Very easy to pair with the PS3, and it stays synced. I even turned it on while in CoD4 to type some names for my custom classes, since they mysteriously disappeared again … found it after 1 or 2 seconds, very quick.

I’m much more willing to send and reply to messages in the XMB now. The built in mouse pad works well too. On the far right there is a scroll sensor, very easy to browse web pages now. You can actually use the mouse pad to navigate the XMB too. You can tap the mouse pad to click on links in web browsers, or even to select things in the XMB.

Now on the Linux side, I found some instructions for getting it synced and it worked, mouse pad and all. But I accidentally hit the reset button on the back which is very easy to do if you grab it just right. So it lost connection to Linux, I had to repair it. Since then I have put some tape over the reset button, lol. Problem solved

One thing that bugged me though. When booting into Linux you have to hit enter to start the booting process, but at that point it doesn’t see the bluetooth keyboard. So I have to hook up a usb keyboard just to hit enter! Then I can use the bluetooth keyboard to log in.. There may be a way to sync the bluetooth keyboard so I don’t have to usb keyboard just to hit enter once! Hitting enter doesn’t bug me. It’s that I need a usb keyboard just to do that.

Side note on Linux, PS3 firmware 2.10 broke the wireless in Linux Please Sony correct this or let us Linux users how to fix it.

It has some keys marked on the keyboard as x, circle, triangle and square. But it has no start or select button. I wish it had dedicated PlayStation buttons but not a huge deal. There are some media playback buttons at the top: reverse, play, forward, and BD/DVD Menu. But if I was watching a movie I’d rather use the actual PS3 remote control. But it’s nice it’s built into this keyboard.

Out of curiosity I tried this keyboard with my iMac and it works. You can also use a mouse in addition to this keyboard with the PS3 / Linux / or iMac. I don’t have UT3, so I can’t test if it works playing PS3 games.

Overall I really like it, matches the look of the PS3 well. Typing and using the mouse feel good. It’s lightweight, does feel a little cheap. Not to pricey ($61 from Amazon). If I had to rate it a 8.9 of 10.

You can view full size photos here

Ha ha! This is a spoof of the original Tom Cruise video, so the video below makes more sense if you’ve seen the Cruise one.

It’s a good job the Sony brand is still strong in Europe:

Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) — Sony Corp., the world’s largest video-game console maker, sold a record number of PlayStation 3 machines in Europe during the holiday shopping season after lowering prices to compete against Nintendo Co.’s Wii.

Sony, which began selling PlayStation 3s in Europe in March, shipped about 1.2 million consoles in the region during the five- week period ended Dec. 31, Kazuo Hirai, president of Sony’s game division, said in a Bloomberg Television interview aired today. That’s in line with U.S. shipments during the period, he said.

Now I don’t know if that figure is ’sold to retailers’ or is the actual number of consoles purchased by customers. Still, the Sony brand has been doing very well in Europe during the 2nd half of last year and it’s something Sony has needed since sales have been pretty poor for the most part in Japan and North America.

Maybe they could say thank you by bringing the EU store in line with the Japanese and North America Stores, with regards to content!

1.2m PS3s Sold in Europe during Christmas Period

What month in 2008 (or at all?) will the PS3 surpass the 360 in monthly sales? (In North America.)

See Darrin’s post about 2008 predictions to read more.

Previous Poll Results:

Who would you rather play in Soul Calibur IV?

* Darth Vader: 76% (87)
* Yoda: 24% (27)

Total Votes : 114

From here:

I’m going to predict that, at some point in 2008, Xbox 360 will enjoy its last ever month outselling PlayStation 3.

I would like to agree, but then again, I thought the PS3 was a way better pick in 2007, and the North American market clearly disagreed.

To paraphrase a famous quote:

Analysts can’t even predict the past, much less predict the future.

Regardless, it’s nice to see such genuine optimism and enthusiasm for the PS3, as opposed to a year ago when the PS3 was being drowned by doomsayers.

Slow week this time. We have two totally different movies. A family friendly movie about a football player that finds out he has a daughter or a horror movie with a guy that likes to place people in death traps and watch.

The Game Plan - Disney / Buena Vista
Saw IV: Unrated Director’s Cut - Lionsgate Films