Sony CEO Howard Stringer told the Associated Press that number was significantly greater than most weekly sales for the system, which is falling in competition against the Wii and Xbox 360.

The price of the current PS3, which has an 80 GB hard drive, was cut by $100 two weeks ago to bring it down to around $500.  That caused weekly sales to be around 75,000 units.  Then, last week Sony launched a 40 GB version of the console, causing another spike in sales.

"It's the breakthrough we've been anticipating.  We've been holding our breath," said Stringer.  

Previously, the PS3 was selling around 30,000 - 40,000 units per week.  According to NPD Group, the entire month of September only saw 119,000 PS3 units sold.  Last week alone almost defeats that number.

Sony has struggled to find a winning version of the PS3.  It originally launched a 20 GB and 60 GB version, both of which have since been discontinued.  It is now selling the 40 GB and 80 GB models, but both of these have scrapped the PS2 Emotion Engine, making backwards compatibility much more limited.