Nintendo DS Tops Hardware Sales In Japanese Holiday Week

Market research firm Media Create has revealed data for weekly hardware sales in Japan for the week ending March 23rd, following details of the software top thirty. Although software sales have been markedly up this week, with a number of new releases timed to coincide with a national holiday, hardware sales have seen a more modest boost. As has become usual, there is little to separate the top three selling formats, with the Nintendo DS coming out ahead this week. The Nintendo DS also saw the sharpest improvement in sales this week, with figures up by close to 12,000 units for a total of 65,055. In second place the Wii was up by over 6,500 units to 62,404, at the same time becoming the first format to sell over one million units in total this year. The PSP saw sales rise by just over 2,000 units to 59,833 but despite the holiday week a relative lack of prominent new releases, compared to other formats, saw PlayStation 3 sales fall by 2,000 units to 12,874. PlayStation 2 sales were static at 9,990 units, while the Xbox 360 dropped by a few hundred to 1,407. Overall in the software top fifty there were twenty-three Nintendo DS titles, thirteen Wii titles, six PSP games, three PlayStation 3 titles, three PlayStation 2 titles and two Xbox 360 games.