Sony has claimed the opening round in the next-generation games console battle after selling more than one million PlayStation 4 consoles in its opening weekend in just the US and Canada alone.
That contrasts with a similar level of sales claimed by Microsoft for the first day of sales of its Xbox One console, but spread out over a wider range of territories.
The next-generation consoles from both companies will not just be games consoles, but are intended as connected living room devices for downloading media and home shopping.
The Xbox One was released on Thursday 21 November in 13 countries worldwide, including the UK, with fans queueing up at midnight to be among the first to take home the new console.
Sony launched its rival console a week earlier and also claimed sales in excess of one million, but in markets restricted to the US and Canada.
The Xbox One is based on a custom-designed AMD Fusion system-on-chip with eight x86 instruction set Jaguar cores. It also sports an AMD Radeon graphics processing unit, as well as 8GB of DDR3 system memory and a 500GB hard disk drive, Blu-ray disc drive, 802.11n Wi-Fi connectivity, Ethernet support, and video output of up to 3840-by-2160 using HDMI 1.4.
It also has a Kinect sensor, which also has a 1080p high-definition video camera, built in. This has made the Xbox One significantly more expensive than the rival Sony PlayStation 4.
However, the run-up to the Xbox One launch was widely regarded as a public relations disaster as Microsoft sought to restrict second-hand game sales. It also had to defend itself against claims that the device could record and transmit sound and images of people via its built in Kinect movement-detection device - even when it was supposed to be turned off.
In its official unveiling in May, it also alienate gamers by emphasising its role as a media player, rather than a games console.
