Sony Sells More Than One Million PlayStation 4s on First Day, But Some Are Defective

More than one million units of Sony’s latest gaming console, the PlayStation 4, were sold within 24 hours of its Friday debut in the U.S. and Canada.

The company had previously said that about a million of those units were preordered before launch day. The number makes it seem likely that Sony will meet its year-end goal of three million units sold worldwide — a marked contrast from 2006, when manufacturing problems kept a large number of PlayStation 3s out of consumers’ hands.

Some early adopters have reported problems with overheating and TV connectivity, with both problems already receiving derisive nicknames online: The “Red Line of Death” and the “Blue Light of Death,” so-called after the “Red Ring of Death” that plagued early owners of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console.

We’re awaiting comment from a Sony representative reached via email about the hardware glitches. No clear answers to these problems and no estimate of just how many people are affected have yet emerged.

Since Friday, the company line has been that 0.4 percent of the consoles (or 4,000 out of a million) are potentially defective, “which is within our expectations for a new product introduction.”