Nintendo DS Hardware Sales Rise In JapanNintendo DS Hardware Sales Rise In Japan

Market research firm Media Create has revealed data for weekly hardware sales in Japan, for the week ending April 22nd, following details of the software top thirty yesterday. As with software, sales have shown a general increase in the last week before the Golden Week series of holidays – one of the most important retail periods in the Japanese calendar. As usual, the Nintendo DS console was the best selling format, with sales up by almost 40,000 units to 172,440. The supply-constrained Wii saw a more modest increase of just over 2,000 units to 77,913 in total. For the first time since the release of Monster Hunter Portable 2nd, the PSP saw a rise in sales of over 4,500 to 29,459 – helped by the release of Final Fantasy: Anniversary Edition. For the second week, PlayStation 2 sales were above that of its successor, although down by over 1,000 units to 12,872. The PlayStation 3 recorded its third consecutive weekly low in Japan, dropping by just under 1,000 units to 11,000 consoles sold. The Xbox 360 also fell by over 500 units to 2,307, while the Game Boy Advance family of consoles remained almost static at 1,364 units, and the GameCube actually increased by 100 units to 266. Extended sales data of the top fifty selling games in Japan show that not a single PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 was present in the charts, compared to thirty-four Nintendo DS games, eight PlayStation 2 titles, four Wii games and four PSP titles.