Wii Sales Lead Over PS3 Falls to 3:1 In Japan

New data from Famitsu publisher Enterbrain has revealed that sales of the Wii in Japan fell to a ratio of 3:1 against the PlayStation 3 in August. In July, the lead was as much as 4:1 and in June it was 7:1. In fact, back in November 2006, the sales ratio was as much as 8:1 in the Wii’s favor. Enterbrain sales data broadly agrees with that of weekly data from Media Create and shows that a total of 245,653 Wii consoles were sold in Japan in the four weeks ending August 26th, compared to just 81,541 for the PlayStation 3 and 11,288 for the Xbox 360. According to further Enterbrain data, as relayed by a recent Bloomberg article, the Wii has a lifetime-to-date total of 3,406,528 in Japan, compared to 1,143,798 for the PlayStation 3 and 442,290 for the Xbox 360. However, with the Wii having suffered stock problems since its launch, it may be difficult to draw any long term conclusions from the latest results, particularly in a month during which the PlayStation 3 saw the release of the top selling Minna no Golf 5 (aka Hot Shots Golf 5), whose affect on hardware sales appears only now to be lessening. As such sales of the Wii in general, and its lead over the PlayStation 3, have varied wildly since launch, with Nintendo’s console leading only by 2:1 in March this year when the Wii sold just 262,754 units and the PlayStation 3 112,027.