Sony's tactics beat the date breakers

RELEASE DATES

Sony crowned Playstation's first UK birthday by enforcing retail to keep the street date and SRP of F1 - the fastest selling CD-ROM game of all time.

Chart trackers Gallup recorded sales of 20,000 in the game's first 48 hours on shelves, and Sony estimates 30,000 copies were sold by lunchtime on Tuesday 17 September.

Only 12 isolated incidents of street breaking were recorded. Software City in Leeds put the title out on Wednesday 11 September but had it back in the stockroom five minutes after a stiff phonecall from Sony.

Both Sony and exclusive distributor Centresoft attribute the trade's uncharacteristic display of obedience to the strongly worded letter distributed by Sony to the multiples regarding keeping street dates. "We had unequivocal support," said Sony sales director Doug Goodwin.

Centresoft sales director David Neal said independents far exceeded their usual market share on day one because it wasn't discounted and it wasn't shipped early. "This gives them amazing confidence for Tekken 2," he said.

F1's success is the latest in an unusually strong string of record breaking triple-A titles over the summer. It inherited the fastest selling CD mantel from VIE's recent PSX game, Resident Evil. F1 has also proved itself faster than the PC CD game Grand Prix 2, which sped to number one at the end of July with a 333,000 first day ship. Playstation's share of the CD market is now over 30%, way ahead of Saturn's 7%.

Sony is anticipating knocking stories from the national media for its forthcoming u40 million Playstation TV campaign. The ads feature a man driven insane by the Playstation. The Mail on Sunday has got MP David Atkinson and mental health charities Mind and the National Schizophrenics Fellowship to condemn the campaign.