Wii Sees Surge in Weekly Japanese Hardware Sales

Market research firm Media Create has revealed data for weekly hardware sales in Japan for the week ending December 9th, following details of the software top thirty. The recovery of Nintendo hardware sales in Japan has continued this week, with large increases for both the Nintendo DS and Wii, as well as the PSP. As usual the Nintendo DS was the best selling console of the week – up over 43,500 units to a total of 168,255. Boosted by the success of Wii Fit, console sales for Nintendo’s home console rose by over 40,000 units to 115,057. As a result, the Wii reached another milestone, as it equaled the lifetime sell-through figure in Japan for the GameCube, of just over 4 million units. Despite these successes, the PSP was still close behind the two Nintendo consoles in third place, with 91,481 unit sold – a rise of almost 17,000 thanks in part to the success of Hot Shots Golf Portable 2 this week. The PlayStation 3 saw only a small gain of around 1,000 units to a total of 38,123. However, this still kept it well above the PlayStation 2, which saw sales drop by over 1,500 units to 11,987. Despite the debut of Mistwalker’s Lost Odyssey in the top ten, Xbox 360 sales increased by only around 2,000 units to 8,876.