PlayStation Vita has been out in Asian territories such as Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong since December, but last week, it was released in North America and Europe, completing its worldwide launch. This morning, Sony Computer Entertainment sent out word of how the device has performed in its first week.
The catch is that Sony aren’t providing numbers for the North American and European launch, specifically. What they are saying is that Vita sales have exceeded 1.2 million units worldwide.
As of two weeks ago, PlayStation Vita had sold 578,812 units in Japan. While we don’t have access to sales numbers from the rest of Asia, this leaves us with an upper limit of approximately 621,000 for US/Europe/Asia sales combined. Again, that isn’t for the US/EU launch specifically, and it doesn’t tell us how the sales were divided up across both territories, but it does give one a vague idea.
By comparison, the Nintendo 3DS sold just under 400,000 units in its first week in North America and 303,000 units in its first weekend in Europe, making for about 703,000 units sold at launch.
At the time, Nintendo called the 3DS their fastest-selling portable device ever, but considering how 3DS sales dipped in the months to follow, it should be interesting to see how Vita holds up in the near future. As of January 2012, 3DS had sold over 15 million units worldwide, but it took a price cut and two Mario games to do it.
Food for thought:
Sony also mentioned software sales for PlayStation Vita. 2 million pieces of software have been sold worldwide to date, including both retail channels and the PlayStation Network.
