Sony responds to Moore barbs

The bore of words continues! Having said this week that he doubts Sony "has the talent" to catch up with Xbox Live, Microsoft's Peter Moore now finds himself on the receiving end of similarly snipey comments from Sony America PR boss Dave Karraker - who also took umbrage at Moore's claim that it's "not in Sony's DNA" to get a software solution like Live up and running "from zero".

"I would argue that consumers worldwide, to the tune of over 200 million PlayStations, PS2s, PSPs and PS3s, have decided whether or not Sony has the DNA to deliver hardware, software and services to suit this industry," Karraker told GamePro, adding that he felt Gran Turismo's launch on PlayStation 3's online service demonstrated the potential in that area.

Moving away from that, Karraker also rounded on Microsoft's claims that it's sold 10.4 million Xbox 360s, pointing out that it's only sold those to retailers. In an interview with our sister site GamesIndustry.biz this week, Moore said that Sony's PS3 shipment figure was "irrelevant" because it only referred to products leaving the factory, whereas Microsoft had sold its units to retailers. Karraker argued: "'Sold' to Sony has always meant what the consumer has actually purchased." (Although, at the risk of inflaming things further, we should probably point out that Sony often releases shipment figures but routinely declines requests for sell-through clarification when we ask about it.)

Anyway, "I think many people have incorrectly viewed our competitor's 'sold' figure to believe it was actually sold to consumers, which it was not," was Karraker's conclusion. Although somehow we doubt that's the end of this. With American NPD Group sales figures due out soon though, we should have a clearer idea of how many units the two companies have been actually selling recently. So expect to hear from Microsoft and Sony in the near future.