Japanese Hardware: Nintendo DS Maintains Lead In Charts

The first new entries of the year appeared in the Japanese game chart this week, but hardware sales in Japan are drifting downwards -- even if the status quo is basically preserved. The Nintendo DS handheld was still the best-selling platform, although its sales fell by 20,000 units to a total of 81,334. Of these sales 62,525 were for the newer DSi model and 18,809 for the older DS Lite. The PSP also maintained its second place position, with its sales falling by 18,000 units to 42,559. Wii sales were down by 9,000 units, despite New Play Control! title Super Mario Tennis hitting the number one spot, for a weekly total of 32,333. PlayStation 3 sales fell by 7,500 units to 20,690, while the Xbox 360 was down only by around 1,000 units to 9,576. PlayStation 2 sales also dropped by around 1,000 units to 5,760. Overall in the software top 50, there were 23 titles for the Nintendo DS, 11 for the Wii, eight for the PlayStation 3, five for the PSP, two for the PlayStation 2, and one for the Xbox 360.