Japanese Hardware: PSP Holds Top Slot As Wii Passes PS3

Sony's standard PlayStation Portable held its number one slot in the Japanese hardware sales charts this week -- but in total, the combined Nintendo DS platform held onto its leadership position. According to data from tracking firm Media Create for the week that ended February 28, 2010, Wii improved by nearly 5,000 units to 36,241 for the week, a week-on-week gain of 13.8 percent -- the biggest improvement on the chart. That performance allowed the system to move up to number two and displace the PlayStation 3, whose sales in turn declined by nearly 5,000. Other than that slight shuffling among the top three, none of the other hardware placements changed, and unit sales for the remaining six consoles were nearly identical to last week's figures, as Japanese console game charts saw no game sell more than 75,000 copies. On the combined platform charts, Wii and PlayStation 3 swapped places, with the former rising one slot to number three, reflecting the change to the individual chart results. Overall, while the Nintendo DS platform maintained its total lead, the gap between it and the PSP platform narrowed from roughly 10,000 units to roughly 7,000 units. Below are the full sales rankings from Media Create for the week that ended February 28, 2010. The second chart lumps together sales of all models in a given line of hardware).