Japanese Hardware: Xbox 360 Trumps A Neck-And-Neck PS3, Wii

The success of Xbox 360 exclusive Star Ocean: The Last Hope in the Japanese software charts has had an expected knock-on effect in terms of hardware this week. Not only has Microsoft’s console outsold both the Wii and PlayStation 3, but it came within 4,000 units of the PSP. The Nintendo DS was still the best seller of the week, but with only two titles in the software top 10, its sales fell 16,000 units to 51,814 (41,839 for the DSi and 9,975 for the DS Lite). Despite better success in terms of software sales, the PSP still fell by over 4,500 units to 29,552. Ultimately, the only platform to see a rise this week was the Xbox 360, which shot up by 15,500 units to 25,334. This put the home console’s yearly total at just shy of 100,000 units -- now just 70,000 units short of a lifetime total of 1 million units sold in Japan. To underline a poor week of sales for Nintendo, the PlayStation 3 continued its slow encroachment on the Wii’s sales position, with the two platforms reaching near-parity this week. The Wii was down 4,000 units to 16,973 and the PlayStation 3 down 2,500 units to 16,149. PlayStation 2 sales slipped by just a few hundred to 5,029. Overall in the software top 50, Nintendo’s poor showing is less evident – although most of its titles are in the lower reaches of the chart. In total there were 19 titles for the Nintendo DS, nine each for the Wii and PSP, five each for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 2, and three for the Xbox 360.