600,000 units of Resistance?
Not particularly impressive at all. Gears of War reached 2million copies in 6 weeks.
The irony is, the reason Gears sales dwarf Resistance sales is the same reason Sony is able to make it sound like the PS3 is doing well when it's really not - availability. There were enough 360 users around to shift this many copies of Gears compared to not near as many PS3s out there to shift copies of Resistance.
The reason the PS3 has sold so quick is because there were more than enough, perhaps too many units available meaning everyone that wanted one could get one, Sony's sales figures however are dwarfed by the Wii's sales figures despite the Wii not being able to claim as many sales in the same time period - this is because whilst more people wanted a Wii, getting hold of one was the problem. If Nintendo had 5 million Wii's available in launch week I'd place a good bet they'd have sold 5 million Wii's and blitzed this figure Sony is abusing to suggest it's doing well, the real test is what happens over a longer period of time - as has been seen in the US, impressive initial sales of the PS3 prove nothing if no one actually wants one after the initial rush is over.
There's also the question of abusing the time period used Sony keeps claiming they have the fastest selling console of all time with the PS3 claiming they sold 200,000 in 2 weeks or whatever as they did previously, but they only use the 2 week figure because it suited them - the PS3 launch was a disaster, relatively few people queued for their PS3, if we used a time measurement of say the first 24hrs of release then both the Wii and 360 once again absolutely blitzed PS3 sales. It's like the age old saying, statistics can be used to prove anything - you just have to use favourable units of measurement.
Sony sold 1 million PAL consoles in this time because they had 2 million consoles to sell, the real question is whether they can shift more over the coming months - if the console was as popular as they claim I'd question why they haven't shifted all 2 million units they've had available in this time period and why there is 1 million more just waiting to be purchased when the Wii is still selling out as soon as is stocked! If Sony has sold 1 million PS3s, what does it really matter if those 1 million were the only ones that actually really wanted the console?
Sony needs action if they really want the PS3 to be a success trying to place a spin on their failures only serves to annoy users like me because it sounds as if they think we're really that stupid as to believe their spin. Sony needs to drop the price of the PS3 heavily (something I'm not sure is possible with their operating losses) and also needs a much bigger library of exclusives before I'll be buying one. Call me back when it's priced under the more affordable £300 mark.