DS, PSP Dominating Sales In Japanese Hardware Charts

Market research firm Media Create has revealed data for weekly hardware sales in Japan for the week ending October 21st, following details of the software top thirty. Although software sales have seen their slowest week of the year so far in Japan, hardware sales have not seen so marked a drop, with some formats even showing small increases. The best selling console of the week is again the Nintendo DS, with sales down by over 8,000 units to 70,608. PSP sales dropped by just under 1,000 units to 58,669. All eyes will now be on sales of the format in subsequent weeks, watching to see if this apparent stabilization of sales, after the spike following the launch of the PSP Slim, is maintained. For the first time in over a month, Wii sales rose this week, up over 4,000 units to 24,932. PlayStation 3 sales also rose, pulling away from the PlayStation 2 with an increase of over 4,500 units to 17,130. PlayStation 2 sales were almost static at 10,281. With only one title in the software top fifty (Beautiful Katamari at number seven), Xbox 360 sales halved from last week’s high to 3,011 units – although it is unclear whether the console might still be suffering from some stock issues. Finally, sales of the Game Boy Advance family of consoles increased slightly to 270 units.