The figures released by the company are not so surprising, because shortly after Thanksgiving weekend, Howard Stringer, Sony CEO, announced that PS3 is selling 200,000 units per week. The main problem Stringer has had to deal with since his 2005 appointment as a Sony CEO was the losses in the games department, where costs for developing the PS3 have grown too high and the sales of Nintendo’s Wii and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 have exceeded the PS3 sales.

For Sony and PS3 is a remarkable performance, especially because 1,2 million represents two-thirds as much as it sold in the whole rest of the year.

Despite the hype generated by the holiday season, the revival of Sony’s gaming machine is based also on the drastic price cuts announced during October in November.

According to the latest data released by NPD Group, a research company that tracks gaming sales, in November PS3 sold 466,000 units compared to only 121,000 units in October.

"Consumers are clearly responding to the expanding multimedia capabilities and a great lineup of over 200 games," Jack Tretton, president of Sony Computer Entertainment America, said in a statement.

Sony has also aggressively promoted PS3 as a Blu Ray player. Though, PS2 still managed to surpass its bigger brother and it sold 1,3 million units during the same period.

Another reason of joy for Sony is represented by the sales of its handheld gaming device, PSP, that managed to sell during the same period 1,4 million units.

Microsoft and Nintendo, Sony’s main rivals in the gaming market, Nintendo haven’t released the data about their holiday sales. Though, in November Nintendo sold 980,000 Wiis and Microsoft 770,000 Xbox 360s.