PS Vita sales falter even during Japan's Golden Week

While almost all handhelds and consoles received a sales boost during Japan's Golden Week, the holiday season wasn't enough to raise hardware sales for Sony's struggling PS Vita. Video game software and hardware sales typically pick up during Golden Week, as evidenced by Nintendo 3DS systems pushing 91,868 during the holiday period, compared to 74,282 in the previous week. That wasn't the case for PS Vita, though, as its numbers actually dropped from 12,299 to 10,583 last week. With few software hits lately (no PS Vita games cracked Japan's top 20 software sales charts at retail) the portable has had trouble breaking out of a three-month-long slump. PS Vita has few blockbusters slated for the immediate future, though the release of Konami's Metal Gear Solid HD Edition and a new Crystal White model will likely spur sales -- neither will ship in Japan until the end of June. The seven-year-old PSP's sales also dropped slightly last week to 20,033 systems, but that's still nearly double PS Vita's numbers. And Wii even outsold the new Sony handheld for the first time in a while, moving 15,789 units Wii had the help of last week's best-selling game, Mario Party 9, which nearly matched its debut week's numbers with 144,585 copies sold. Evergreen titles like Wii Sports Resort, Wii Party, and Mario Kart Wii were also popular Golden Week purchases. Capcom's Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City for PlayStation 3, which was the top-selling game two weeks ago and the second best-selling last week, suffered a big 79 percent drop in week-over-week sales to 52,428 copies. But it still has one of the best debuts for a Resident Evil spin-off. 3DS games like Fire Emblem: Awakening, Super Mario Land 3D, Mario Kart 7, Kid Icarus: Uprising, Monster Hunter 3G, and others all enjoyed a surge in sales during Golden Week, helping 3DS hardware outsell all other consoles combined. Full software and hardware sales charts for the April 30 to May 6 period in Japan, provided by Media Create and translated on the NeoGAF forums, are available here.