PS3: "great momentum" despite PSN hack

Sony's spin on the US April video game/hardware results was growth in spite of "the criminal attack on the PlayStation Network".

"We continue to see a lot of great momentum at the retail level, and appreciate the support we've received from our partners, retailers and customers since the criminal attack on the PlayStation Network," said Sony US mouthpiece Patrick Seybold.

"We hope to have services restored as soon as we can."

Sony's online platform should come back in phases - among the first features for reinstatement is PS3 online gaming. Will that still happen this week? Developers are apparently using PSN again now.

During April, Sony sold 13 per cent more PS3 consoles than in April 2010; "double-digit growth". Exact figures weren't given, but by using the April 2010 PS3 total of 180,800, we can work out that in April 2011, Sony sold 204,304 PS3s.

PS3 game-sales rose far more convincingly by a margin of 40 per cent.

Xbox 360 was the best selling console in North America in April, selling 297,000 boxes.

PlayStation Network went offline on 20th April. Sony announced six days later that an "unauthorised intrusion" had compromised all PSN users' personal details.

Given the timing - and the prolonged outage of PSN - the full affect of The Great PSN Identity Theft may not be felt until US sales for May are known.