Many, Many Boxes Containing Playstation 4s Were Sold On Friday

Those who were shouting from the rooftops about the death of console gaming have been utterly silenced this weekend as Sony revealed their sales figures on the first 24 hours of the Playstation 4's North American release: one million units sold.

Not shipped. Sold. And this is only the North American release.

It wasn't hard to tell that the opinion among many gamers swung in Sony's favor, but it takes far more than the "hardcore" base to rack up day one sales like that. This is the result of a ton of momentum from the Sony camp, and likely a few jumping ship from Microsoft's camp.

This release makes the Playstation 4 Sony's fastest-selling console and very much puts them in line for their lofty expectations of 3 million consoles sold worldwide by the end of the year and 5 million worldwide by next March. To put it in perspective, last gen sales ranked from ~500,000 (Wii), ~300,000 (Xbox 360), and ~200,000 (PS3)... in the first 30 days.

This is a great start, and it'll be very interesting to see how Microsoft stacks up next week. They will be releasing in both the US and the UK at launch, so their numbers should be quite impressive as well.