PSP Beats Wii And DS In Japanese Hardware Sales

Market research firm Media Create has revealed data for weekly hardware sales in Japan for the week ending March 2nd, following details of the software top thirty. With the Wii, Nintendo DS and PSP having been neck-and-neck in hardware sales for the past several weeks it is Sony’s portable which this time takes the lead, with a continued strong performance which as usual comes independent of any significant software success. Despite no major new releases this week, and only two games in the top twenty, the PSP saw sales increase by over 20,000 units to 73,706. By comparison the Wii, with six titles in the top twenty, saw sales rise by only around 1,000 units to 64,535. The Nintendo DS, with nine titles in the top twenty, rose by only a little more to 51,922 units for the week. As usual, the gap between the top three formats and the rest of the market was considerable, with the PlayStation 3 seeing sales fall again, by around 500 units, to 13,520. With the new version of Dynasty Warriors: Gundam at number one though PlayStation 2 sales rose by over 1,000 units to 10,986. Despite new release The Idolm@ster: Live for You! debuting at number five in the software charts Xbox 360 sales rose by less than 300 units to 2,282, with most software sales again appearing to go to existing users.