Sony Computer Entertainment on Tuesday announced that the sales of the PlayStation Vita portable entertainment system have reached over 1.2 million units worldwide as of February 26, 2012. Nearly half of that number was sold in Japan, which signals rather moderate (if not disappointing) product launches in the U.S., Europe, Australia and South-East Asia.

Sony released its PlayStation Vita system on December 17, 2011 in Japan followed by Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea. On February 22, 2012, Sony released Vita in North and Latin America, Europe and PAL territories as well as in Singapore. According to SCE, sales of PSV have "exceeded expectations" surpassing over 1.2 million units worldwide, "firmly establishing PS Vita as the must-have portable entertainment device across the world". Software sales across the globe have surpassed 2.0 million units at both retail and on PlayStation Network.

According to Media Create market tracking firm, sales of PlayStation Vita in Japan have been gradually getting lower since the launch in mid-December and totaled over 570 thousand units by 19th of February, 2012. Therefore, sales in all regions - Europe, U.S., Australia and Singapore in the first days were about 600 thousand (in four days of sales). For comparison: Sony sold 500 thousand of PlayStation Portable Value Packs in the U.S. alone in the first two days (not only value bundles were sold) seven years ago; sales of PSP in the U.K. in the first four days of sales were 185 thousand units back in 2005.

The lackluster welcome of Sony PlayStation Vita in Europe and the U.S. is hardly surprising: the console is rather expensive and yet its game portfolio total around 25 expensive titles. Meanwhile, competing devices like Apple iOS- as well as Google Android-powered smartphones and tablets are widely available for purchase with contracts and their portfolio of software includes thousands of inexpensive games.

Sony PlayStation Vita is based on a system-on-chip with four ARM Cortex-A9 cores, PowerVR SGX543MP4+ graphics engine (accompanied by 128MB of memory) and a memory controller. The new portable game console has 5" multi-touch OLED screen with 960x544 resolution, typical set of PSP buttons, two cameras (front and rear), Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity, GPS, six-axis motion sensing system (three-axis gyroscope, three-axis accelerometer), three-axis electronic compass, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR controller, integrated speakers and microphone as well as multi touchpad located on the back side of the system. For the first time, a portable entertainment system features two analog sticks, which enables a wider range of game genres to be brought into the portable experience.

Tags: Sony, Playstation, Vita, PSP, 3DS, Android, iOS