3DS Outsells Vita In Debut Week, Though It Had An Advantage

With only two days on the Japanese market, PS Vita was unable to overcome the 3DS's full-week advantage, as the Nintendo portable's sales managed to overtake the new system's despite its launch buzz. Many are watching PS Vita's overseas debut for signs of its future performance, and the health of dedicated handhelds in general, as smartphone gaming continues to pick up in popularity. A slow start could leave developers weary of providing software support for the unit. PS Vita's initial 324,859 units sold last week is double that of the PSP's opening weekend sales of 166,074 consoles, but it's noticeably lower than the 3DS's weekend launch of 371,326 in Japan last February. Local tracking firm Media Create, which provided these hardware figures, expressed some disappointment over the sales: "To be honest we would like to have seen it sell a bit more, but you can say that it reached a certain level of success." Media Create CEO Atsushi Hosokawa blamed the lower than expected weekend sales for PS Vita -- 65 percent of its reported 500,000 shipment for the week -- on its high price and lack of strong launch titles, according to a report from Andriasang. The 3DS, bolstered by a very strong holiday slate of software (e.g. Monster Hunter Tri-G, Mario Kart 7, and Super Mario 3D Land), actually saw its week-to-week sales increase: 367,691 units compared to 350,321 two weeks ago. All other consoles saw a boost in sales in Japan, too: PlayStation 3's numbers grew from 44,661 to 65,119 sold. And while PSP dropped from the #2 to #4 to make way for its successor, it still enjoyed an increase from 51,191 to 64,468 sold. Wii sales also jumped from 46,018 to 60,916 systems sold, and the Nintendo DS line climbed from 6,630 to 9,155 sold. Xbox 360 and PlayStation 2 sales saw modest gains, increasing to 3,584 and 1,400 consoles sold respectively. Below are the full sales rankings from Media Create for the week ended December 18, 2011. (The second chart lumps together sales of all models in a given line of hardware.)