Japanese Hardware: PS3 Passes 3 Million

With the software sales chart still showing sales in the doldrums, hardware sales in Japan have also continued to underperform. Although the Nintendo DS still leads, its margin over the PSP is small - with the numbers for home consoles also converging. Overall Nintendo DS sales were down almost 15,000 units on the previous week to 47,542 (40,673 on the DSi and 6,869 on the DS Lite). PSP sales fell by just over 7,000 units to a total of 40,886 – just above that of the DSi alone. The PlayStation 3 remained the best selling home console for the seventh consecutive week, with sales falling by just over 3,500 units to 20,362. According to Media Create’s data, this week also saw the platform exceeding 3 million units sold life-to-date in Japan -- the same figure stated by Enterbrain earlier in the month. The Wii was next on 15,525 units, down around 2,000 on the previous week. After several weeks of poor sales, a new SKU for the Xbox 360 in Japan saw its results up over 2,000 units to 10,134. It was the only platform to show an increase, though, with PlayStation 2 sales down almost 1,000 units to 4,531. Overall in the software top 50, there were 21 titles for the Nintendo DS, nine each for the PSP and Wii, six for the PlayStation 3, five for the PlayStation 2 and none for the Xbox 360.