PlayStation Move's debut 'modest' in US, big in Europe

As part of yesterday's September US game sales report, NPD said that game accessory sales increased 13 percent last month thanks in part to the launch of the PlayStation Move. However, neither the industry research group nor Sony Computer Entertainment America released any hard sales figures for the system.

That said, a report from Wedbush analysts Michael Pachter and Edward Woo pegged the motion-sensing system as having a "modest" debut stateside. According to their estimates, the Move sold just 300,000 units following its September 17 launch in the US, including PlayStation 3s bundled with the system. (The month saw 312,000 PS3s sold overall.) However, Wedbush's latest report predicts that October will see "strong sales" of the system as the holiday season approaches.

Meanwhile, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe chief Andrew House was much more bullish on his company's product. Speaking with the Bloomberg news service, the executive said that Move saw "very significant sales in the first month since launch, somewhere in the region of 1.5 million units for the new controller across just Europe." SCEE also distributes products in the entire EMEA region, which includes the Middle East, Africa, and Australasia.

House says the Move has done so well that supply might not be able to keep pace with demand. "The initial sales response has been so far in excess of our initial plan that we'll probably be looking at accelerating production," he boasted.

The PlayStation Move launched in Europe on September 15, North America on September 17, and will launch in Japan on October 21. The system, which consists of the PlayStation Eye camera and LED-capped wand controllers, is available in a variety of configurations. Controllers are sold on their own for $50, bundled with the PlayStation Eye camera and minigames compilation Sports Champions for $100, or with all that and a 320GB PlayStation 3 for $400. Although games like Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 sell for full price, a line of PlayStation Move games sells for just $40 each.