Both Sony NEX-6 and Olympus E-PL9 have 16.0 MP resolution sensors but Sony NEX-6's sensor is APS-C (23.5 x 15.6 mm ) and Olympus E-PL9's sensor is Four Thirds (17.3 x 13 mm ).
Since Sony NEX-6's has a larger sensor area with the same resolution, this means that it also has a larger pixel area hence better light collecting capacity for a given aperture compared to Olympus E-PL9.
Below you can see the NEX-6 and E-PL9 sensor size comparison.
As seen above, Sony NEX-6 has a 1.6x Larger sensor area than Olympus E-PL9. Larger sensors give photographer more control on the depth of field and blurry background compared to smaller sensor when shot in same focal length and aperture.