Slow PS3 start was down to stock - Sony

Sony bigwig Peter Dille has explained that the real reason for PS3's slow start was poor levels of stock; the pump was "primed".

"The shortcoming was getting a lot of people whipped up and having them wait in-line and then only having a very, very limited amount of hardware supply globally, which meant that we had a kind of start and stop effect with our launch, which is hard to recover from," Dille told IGN. "It was a speed bump that we had to overcome and we overcame it.

"There is nothing but momentum behind the PS3 at this point," he added. "We're off to the races."

It's not a question of "if" the PS3 will overtake Xbox 360, Dille went on to say, but "when".

"I mean, we've got 31 million [units sold] worldwide right now - they've got 39 million [units sold]. I don't even need to go out 10 years," he quipped.

"I'm not going to make any predictions for your interview today other than we'll pass them, but you look at where we are today and where they are today, and they had an opportunity to sprint as far ahead of us as possible when they had the head start.

"Well, we're breathing down their necks and they can see us in the rear-view mirror and it's not going to take too long to pass them."

Sales of Sony's PS3 overtook Xbox 360 on a monthly basis in the US following the release of the PS3 Slim. There, in the whole of 2009, Microsoft's console finished just 400,000 units ahead of Sony's machine.

In Japan, there's a gulf between PS3 and 360. Sony's console now goes toe-to-toe with Wii, while Xbox 360 sells around 5000 a week alongside the PS2. To date, the PS3 has sold over 4.5m units in Japan, while the 360 has managed over 1m.