Software Success Fails To Help PS3 Hardware Sales In Japan

Market research firm Media Create has revealed data for weekly hardware sales in Japan for the week ending June 17th, following details of the software top thirty yesterday. Overall hardware sales are largely identical to the previous week for the major formats, with Nintendo DS Lite sales up by less than 1,500 to 118,684 units sold – although this is the first week that sales of the original DS model have registered as zero. Sales of the still supply-constrained Wii are up by just less than 1,000 units to 65,521, while the PSP has enjoyed the largest increase of the week, with sales up by over 8,500 to 33,359 units in total. The PSP has five titles in the top fifty this week, the largest number for some time. However, none are the games are new releases and the highest ranking is Dragon Ball Z: Shin Budokai 2 at number twenty-two – down from number three last week. PlayStation 2 sales were up by only a few hundred to 11,974 units, leaving the PlayStation 3 in fifth place despite the release of Ninja Gaiden Sigma at number three in the software sales charts. The success of the game seems to have had virtually no effect on hardware sales, which have risen by only 700 units to 9,481, suggesting that the majority of people buying the game were existing owners. The success of Trusty Bell: Chopin no Yume has had a more marked, but still relatively minor, effect on Xbox 360 hardware sales, which have risen by just over 5,000 units to 7,583. In so doing, weekly sales for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 have reached their closest point since both console’s release in Japan. Sales for the Game Boy Advance family of consoles was almost static at 867 units, while the GameCube rose slightly to 223 units.