Not long after the PS2 turned the ripe old age of seven, Sony celebrated the PS3's first birthday. On November 16, the new console officially became one year old, and despite an admittedly slow start, business is definitely climbing.

According to GameDaily, Sony has sold 5.6 million PS3 units worldwide, and 2 million of those sales came in North America. They have not altered their goal for March, which still sits at 11 million, and of course, the PS3 continues to outsell the Xbox 360 in Japan by a large margin. The Nintendo Wii, on the other hand, continues its dominance, although it's appearing temporary at this point. As far as PS3 software goes, 28 million units have been sold worldwide, and North America accounts for exactly 1/4 of those sales. Sony plans to release 160 new PS3 titles (where have we seen that number before?) before the end of the fiscal year, and that features 19 exclusive first and third-party games. As for multiplatform woes due to developers first making a game on another console and porting it to the PS3, Sony says those days are rapidly disappearing.

"Developers are now creating games on PS3 and then porting them to other platforms. This shows the strides developers are making in creating content for PS3 and also provides developers with an advantage as it's harder to port from Xbox 360 to PS3. Ubisoft's Haze is the first title to be created on PS3 and ported to Xbox. When we designed PS3 our goal was to introduce a system so technically advanced that it could stand the test of time and could take the industry in a whole new direction, which for PS3 was high-definition entertainment," said Jack Tretton, President and CEO of SCEA. "While we're excited by the progress we've made this first year, we know that like our other platforms, the best is still yet to come, especially given our new hardware and software line-up, and that PS3 will continue to take the industry to new heights for years to come." (source- GameDaily)

The PlayStation Network is looking good, too. Even though there are only 3 million members - Xbox Live boasts 8 million - those 3 million have occurred only in the past year; it took five years for Live to reach 8 million, remember. Sony also says over 60 million pieces of content have been downloaded, which translates to about 12.3 per member. It'll be interesting to see how all these numbers change when the PS3 celebrates its second birthday...

But I am thinking of getting a Xbox 360 instead of a PS3, when i go abroad next month :p