Japanese Hardware: Dragon Quest IX Still Driving DS Sales

Dragon Quest IX sales may have fallen to 613,000 units in its second week after a chart-burning 2.3 million release week, but the launch of the anticipated Square Enix RPG is still driving DSi hardware to the top of the charts in Japan. Media Create says the DSi sold 96,986 units in the week ending July 19. This is still less than the 118,202 copies it sold when DQIX launched, but it puts Nintendo's newer handheld well ahead of the PSP, which sold 24,053 units. Sales of Dragon Quest IX, which offers a red DSi bundle, are strongly benefiting adoption of Nintendo's camera-equipped hardware upgrade. The prior model DS Lite sold only 9,932 units. The Japanese game hardware charts for the week ended July 19 are as follows: DSi: 96,986 PSP: 24,053 Wii: 20,807 DS Lite: 9,932 PS3: 8,865 PS2: 3,352 Xbox 360: 2,899 Other notable chart highlights include the fact that Wii unit sales fell only slightly, reaching 20,807 units compared to last week's 22,141. Sales of other home consoles also saw slight drops over last week, although this week the Xbox 360 fell enough to land in last place, topped by the PlayStation 2.