Japanese Hardware: PS3 Sales Sink To New Low

PSP hardware sales have more than halved in Japan, just a week after the launch of the new PSP-3000 model. With no major new titles in the software charts to support it further, unit sales dropped by 99,000 to 60,467. In what has proven another poor week for sales across the board, the Nintendo DS has slumped by almost 7,000 units to 22,965. This is in large part due to the imminent release of the new DSi model though and sales are expected to spike following its release on November 1st. With DS sales artificially depressed, the Wii was the second best selling format of the week, although its own sales fell by over 1,500 units to 24,292. As other formats record some of their worst ever results in Japan, the Xbox 360 continues to enjoy its best run of sales since launch. As such weekly figures again remained almost unchanged at 7,844 units. With a large number of titles in the top 50, the PlayStation 2 also continues to sell relatively strongly, down only a few hundred units to 6,962. However, the PlayStation 3 has recorded its worst week of sales ever in Japan, down around 800 units to 3,931. Although it continues to suffer from a paucity of software releases in the top 50, sales this week are also being affected by the imminent release of a new hardware bundle in Japan. Overall in the top 50, there were 21 titles for the Nintendo DS, 11 for the PlayStation 2, 10 for the Wii, seven for the PSP, one for the PlayStation 3 and none for the Xbox 360.