Two executives from Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. said recently that the company hopes to sell eleven million of its latest systems by the end of this fiscal year, which ends on March 31, 2008. Although Sony no longer promises that PlayStation 3 is on track to win the next-gen console battle by that timeframe, 11 million units may be easy to sell.

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) chief executive Kazuo Hirai told the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper he was confident of fulfilling the goal to sell 11 million latest PS3 game consoles by March 31, 2008, despite stiff competition from Nintendo’s Wii and Microsoft’s Xbox 360, reports Associated Press news-agency. The U.S.-based colleague of Mr. Hirai, Jack Tretton, who is chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) confirmed the words of the head of Sony’s video game group and even said that 11 million PS3 game consoles will be sold through (to end-users), not sold in (to retailers), by the end of the fiscal year.

“We expect to sell 33 million pieces of hardware across the three platforms. And that breaks out to 12 million PS2s, 11 million PS3s, and 10 million PlayStation Portables, and then we don’t break out software, but our forecast is 250 million units of software across those three platforms,” said Mr. Tretton in and interview with The Mercury News newspaper.

When asked to clarify the term “to sell”, he said that this term means that an end-user obtains a piece of equipment from a reseller.

“Worldwide numbers, and they’re sales, not shipment numbers. We consider it a sale when it goes to a consumer,” said Mr. Tretton.

According to VG Chartz, a videogame charts web-site, so far Sony had sold through approximately 7.47 million PS3 game consoles worldwide as of the end of November. Therefore, to sell about 3.5 million game consoles in the following four months, the PlayStation 3 system has to sell rather well.

Back in November the latest game system from Sony quadrupled its sales to about 466 thousand of units sold through, according to market research company NPD Group, thanks to strong season and price-cut. In December and January Sony’s PS3 will only be boosted by seasonal factors and SCEI will have to ensure that PS3 either increases its sell-through performance, or keeps it on the level of November to achieve the goal of selling in 11 million PS3 game consoles worldwide.