Despite consecutive years of declining sales, only now has Sony surpassed its national rivals at Nintendo in terms of console numbers sold.
According to the Nikkei Asian Review, this marks the first time in eight years that Sony has surpassed Nintendo, largely down to the recent release of its latest console – the Playstation 4 – in November 2013.
Across the whole fiscal year of 2013, Sony sold 18.7m console units and had sold a further 7m units by the end of March 2014.
Meanwhile, Nintendo’s sales figures show that 16.31m units were sold in 2013 despite the fact it launched its own next-gen console – the WiiU – around the same time and yet posted a slump of 31pc.
The last time that Sony achieved this feat was back in 2005 when its launch of the previosu generation Playstation 3 faced much tougher competition from Nintendo hardware in the form of the incredibly popular console the Wii and its portable gaming device, the DS.
The creators of Mario are facing an up-hill struggle to maintain their finances as earlier this year they reported that they had posted a profit decline of 8pc in 2013.
According to the BBC, this latest news comes back off the announcement that the company is to close its European headquarters in Germany with the loss of 130 jobs.
