Retail credited for PS3 boom

SCE UK has praised retail for driving consumer interest during the launch of its re-designed PS3.

The console arrived last week and caused PlayStation 3 hard sales to rocket 1,000 per cent, which in turn had a knock-on effect on software.

Now the platform holder is urging retail to push PS3 hardware bundles to increase game sales in the long-term.

All of our retailer partners did a great job given the short span between announcement and launch and I would like to thank them for turning this on so quickly,” SCE UK sales director Mark Howsen told MCV.

Although we didn’t bundle any of our own titles with the new model, I think we would actively encourage any activity that drives consumer interest and value.

"The problem for retail of course is that bundling can be expensive, but we can see from the market data that once a consumer becomes a PS3 owner they then tend to be very active in terms of future software sales, so as a vehicle to get consumers to adopt our format this makes sense.”