Wii Pushes DS Into Third Place In Japanese Weekly Hardware Sales

The large number of prominent new entries in the software sales charts has prompted significant changes in hardware sales this week, with the Wii becoming the number one selling console, followed by the PSP and Nintendo DS. Although overall software sales figures have risen sharply this week, increases in hardware sales have been less significant – suggesting that many sales have gone to existing owners of each system. Coinciding with the success of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Wii sales were up the sharpest – by almost 20,000 units to 94,473. Despite software sales being at their weakest for a number of weeks PSP hardware sales remained fairly constant, down only 5,000 units at 72,528. Although there were still twenty-four Nintendo DS titles in the top fifty the lack of any prominent new releases saw the system’s sales drop by nearly 12,000 units to 67,472. This is the first time the console has been reduced to being the third best selling format of the week for over a year. With the release of Devil May Cry 4 PlayStation 3 sales were up by over 7,000 units to 41,796. PlayStation 2 sales though were up by less than 1,000 units at 12,115. Although Devil May Cry 4 was the only Xbox 360 title in the top fifty, it still managed to increase hardware sales by over 1,500 units to 6,060.