Sony ships more than 5 million PSPs worldwide

Sony Computer Entertainment has announced that 5.07 million PSP consoles have been shipped around the globe so far, with more than half of that number being sold to North America.

The Japanese giant unveiled the figures at the PlayStation Summit in Tokyo, revealing that 2.33 million units have been shipped to Japan and Asia, while 2.74 million have been sold to the US and Canada.

So far 11.2 million copies of the 48 games in the PSP catalogue have been shipped - 7.3 million to North America, and 3.9 million to Japan and Asia. Sony predicted that there will be 150 titles on the shelves by the end of March.

The company's proprietary UMD movie format has done particularly well in North America, where 4.3 million units have shipped. This figure includes the 1 million copies of Spider-Man 2 which were given away with the first batch of PSP consoles.

In Japan only 400,000 UMD films have been sold, but since the market remains strong in the US and Canada Sony plans to up UMD production in the country from 3 million to 5 million per month.

Newly announced PSP titles include Exciting Pro Wrestling PSP (known as WWE SmackDown! Vs. RAW 2006 in the US and Europe) and SCE Japan title Baito Hell (Part-Time Hell). Other games on show at the PlayStation Summit event included titles from Tecmo, Bandai, Aquaplus, Konami, Spike, Namco, Atlus, Square-Enix and Capcom.

The PSP is slated for a September 1 release in Europe, with an RRP of UKP 179.