One Piece Debut Lifts Japanese 3DS Hardware Sales

Though it continues to trail behind Sony's PSP, the #1 debut of Bandai Namco's One Piece: Unlimited Cruse SP has helped lift Nintendo 3DS hardware sales some 41 percent in Japan. That's according to tracking firm Media Create (via the NeoGAF forums), which reports 24,283 3DS units sold in the week ending May 29, up from 17,240 the previous week. Hardware sales were up 18 percent across the board, recovering from a post-Golden Week slump. PSP sales continued to lead the charts at 33,685. Sony's portable has sold 983,378 units in the region so far this year, comparatively flat with the 983,096 it had sold at this point in 2010. A full breakdown of Japanese software sales from the same period is available here. The full Japanese hardware chart for the week ending May 29 follows.