New Color Helps PSP Keep Japanese Hardware Lead

Market research firm Media Create has revealed data for weekly hardware sales in Japan for the week ending July 20th, following details of the software top thirty. Despite Dragon Quest V on the Nintendo DS selling in record volume, Sony's PlayStation Portable is once again the best selling hardware format of the week, aided by the launch of two new “Metallic Blue” bundles and the release of Namco Bandai’s Gundam Battle Universe. Sales for the PSP rose by 17,000 units to a recent high of 74,024. Despite the huge number of software sales this week, Nintendo DS sales rose by only 6,000 units to 54,531 – suggesting that the hardware market for the format is reaching saturation point. With no new software titles to stimulate demand, sales for the Wii saw a decrease of just under 1,000 units to 40,803. Despite a new title in the top five, PlayStation 3 sales declined by slightly more to 11,253 units for the week. PlayStation 2 sales also fell by around 1,000 units to 9,535, while the Xbox 360 saw sales increase by a few hundred units to 4,208. Overall in the software sales top fifty, there were twenty-six titles for the Nintendo DS, ten for the Wii, seven for the PSP, five for the PlayStation 3, two for the PlayStation 2 and none for the Xbox 360.