PlayStation 4 sales reach 4.2 million, outselling Xbox One by 1.2 million units in 2013

The PlayStation 4 has now sold more than 4.2 million units worldwide as of December 28, 2013. Sony announced the news today at the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show. That mark represents units sold-through to consumers and is well above the 3 million Xbox One units Microsoft sold to consumers by the end of 2013.

There are now more than 7 million combined next-generation systems on the market.

Sony sold more than 1 million PS4 units during the system's first 24 hours and 2.1 million total consoles just two weeks later. SCEA CEO Jack Tretton said previously that selling 3 million consoles by the end of the calendar year would be no problem.

PS4 software sales have now risen to 9.7 million, Sony said, which is a combined figure of physical products and downloadable sales through the PlayStation Store. Some of the top-selling games were Call of Duty: Ghosts, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, and Battlefield 4.

Sony also said that global PlayStation Plus subscriptions have risen by more than 90 percent since the PS4 launch and that players have broadcast more than 1.7 million streams from the PS4 to platforms like Twitch and Ustream.

The Japanese technology giant expects to sell 5 million PS4 units by the end of its fiscal year in March 2014, a figure that now seems well within range. Microsoft has not disclosed sales projections for the Xbox One.

Also today during Sony's CES 2014 presentation, PlayStation president Andrew House revealed that the company's Gaikai-powered streaming technology will be called PlayStation Now. It will enter beta this month, before a worldwide public rollout this summer.

Separately, video streaming service Twitch announced today that between December 23, 2013 and January 3, 2014, an impressive 20 percent of Twitch broadcasters were PS4 owners.

"Ever since we began working with the major console platform companies, we were confident the integration of live broadcasting to Twitch would be a game changer," Twitch marketing VP Matthew DiPietro said. "Based on our success with PlayStation 4, which currently represents twenty percent of our broadcaster base, our vision was on the mark. We envision a day when broadcasting your gameplay is a ubiquitous piece of the gaming experience. We're well on our way."