During the early hours of the morning Sony has revealed at CES 2014 that their newly released PlayStation 4 console has now sold through to consumers a whopping 4.2 million since launching late last year.

This news comes hot on the heels of Microsoft's early announcement yesterday morning that their Xbox One had sold through to customers more than 3 million consoles to date since launching on November 22nd in 13 countries. Compare this to Sony's launch on November 15th for America and November 29th for all other countries including Australia and it looks like this gen is going to be quite a close race.

It wasn't just console numbers that Sony threw around at the event, revealing that they have shifted 9.7 million units of PlayStation 4 software since the launch, averaging out at about two games per platform. The PlayStation Plus subscription - which is now mandatory for online gaming besides free-to-play titles - also saw an increase of more than 90 percent since the launch, something Sony are definitely proud of.

PlayStation 4 users are also apparently taking a liking to video-streaming service Twitch.tv, with more than 1.7 million gameplay broadcasts streamed from the console. According to Twitch, 20 per cent of its broadcasts between 23rd December and 3rd January emanated from that platform.

"Based on our success with PlayStation 4, which currently represents twenty percent of our broadcaster base, our vision was on the mark," said Twitch's VP of marketing Matthew DiPietro. "We envision a day when broadcasting your gameplay is a ubiquitous piece of the gaming experience. We're well on our way."