PSP Gains More Ground In Japanese Hardware Sales

Market research firm Media Create has revealed data for weekly hardware sales in Japan for the week ending June 1st, following details of the software top thirty. Despite the large number of new releases this week in the software chart, hardware sales have been largely static – with most new titles appearing to appeal primarily to existing console owners. The exception has been the PSP, which is again the best selling console of the week, with a recent high of five software titles in the top fifty. After several weeks of gradual decline hardware sales rose by 7,500 units to 71,986. Wii sales saw only a modest rise of less than 2,000 units to 50,851, while Nintendo DS sales were up by just under 1,000 units to 37,404 over the course of the week. PlayStation 3 sales were almost entirely static at 9,169 units for the week, as was the PlayStation 2 at 7,203 units and the Xbox 360 at 1,947 units. Overall in the software sales top fifty there were twenty-two titles for the Nintendo DS, nine for the Wii, eight for the PlayStation 2, five for the PSP, four for the PlayStation 3 and two for the Xbox 360.