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Sony PSP sales tip over 70 million units globally

The new PlayStation Vita handheld gaming console has just been unveiled, but Sony doesn't want us to forget about the PlayStation Portable just yet.
Written by Rachel King, Contributor

The new PlayStation Vita handheld gaming console has just been unveiled, but Sony doesn't want us to forget about the PlayStation Portable just yet.

Sony reports that as of April 27, 2011, PSP sales had reached the point of 70 million units sold worldwide. That's actually quite an impressive number...except everyone is quick to remember that the figure is a far cry from Nintendo DS sales in the last few years.

The original PSP debuted way back in 2004, gained PlayStation Store access in 2008 and "minis" made their debut a year later. And of course, the PSP was affected by the PlayStation Network downtime following the hack attack in April.

Sony really needs the Vita to do well for multiple reasons. The foremost factors would be to make everyone forget about the outage that put personal data of millions of gamers worldwide at risk (or at least push it to the back of their minds), and finally give Nintendo some better competition with its new 3DS. Given the announcement for a new Wii this week, it might be time for Sony to reconsider pushing up the date for a new PlayStation 4 console as well.

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