Japanese Hardware: DS Leads As PS3 Gains Further Ground

With a number of prominent new entries in the software charts, including Mario & Luigi RPG 3 and Street Fighter IV, hardware sales this week in Japan have seen at least a small increase across most platforms. The Nintendo DS was still the best-selling hardware, with sales up by over 6,000 units to 68,293 (53,483 for the DSi model and 14,810 for the DS Lite). The PSP was the only platform to buck this week’s trend, down a few hundred units to a total of 34,256. The Wii’s improved on last week’s sales by just over 500 units, for a total of 21,016. The PlayStation 3 has continued to close the gap on Nintendo’s home console, with sales up this week by 2,500 units to a total of 18,656. As for those consoles lower down the sales chart, Xbox 360 sales were up by 1,500 units to 9,833, while the PlayStation improved by a few hundred to 5,332. Overall in the software top 50, there were 21 titles for the Nintendo DS, 11 for the Wii, seven for the PSP, six for the PlayStation 3, three for the PlayStation 2, and two for the Xbox 360.