Japanese Hardware: DS Maintains Lead As Wii, PS3 Spike

Hardware sales in Japan have had another strong week, matching the similarly brisk trade seen in the software charts. The Nintendo DS was again the best seller, with a total up over 6,500 units to 114,036. Of these sales 87,185 units were for the new DSi and 26,851 (a larger proportion than last week) for the older DS Lite. Although still comfortably in second place PSP hardware sales continued their inverse relationship with the software charts. Despite one of the handheld’s best weeks of software sales ever, hardware sales actually fell by 6,000 units to 55,090. Wii sales increased by 14,500 units to 49,848, a bigger jump than following last week’s debut of Animal Crossing: City Folk, and more than enough to maintain the console’s lead over a resurgent PlayStation 3. Sales of Sony’s lead home console were up 17,500 units to a recent high of 34,978. This despite only one title in the top 10 - albeit the influential Winning Eleven 2009/Pro Evolution Soccer 2009. The Xbox 360 saw sales fall by 4,000 units to 11,423 this week, while the PlayStation 2 was up a few hundred units to 5,628. Overall in the software top 50 there were 21 titles for the Nintendo DS, 10 each for the Wii and PSP, five for the PlayStation 3, three for the Xbox 360 and one for the PlayStation 2.