Japanese Hardware: DS Clings Onto Lead As PS2 Beats Xbox 360

The Nintendo DS has retained its place as the number one selling hardware format in Japan, although with little stimuli from the software sales chart, numbers have fallen across the board. After a boost last week from the release of three new color SKUs, overall DS sales fell by 14,000 to 65,809 units (57,401 on the DSi and 8,408 on the DS Lite). After the release of its own new color SKUs last week, PSP sales fell by over 11,500 units to a total of 54,148. For the fifth week running, PlayStation 3 sales exceeded that of the Wii, although they dropped this week by over 2,500 units to 22,825. Wii sales fell by just less than 1,000 units to 17,276. Despite claims by rival research firm Enterbrain that the Xbox 360 has exceeded 1 million unit sales in Japan, the official Media Create figure stands at 975,069. Although the platform has seen recent high-profile gains in the Japanese market the Xbox 360 is currently undergoing a slump in demand, down over 500 units to 4,849. For the first time in several months, the weekly total of the Xbox 360 fell below that of the PlayStation 2, which was up a few hundred units to 5,246. Overall in the software top 50, there were 22 titles for the Nintendo DS, 10 for the Wii, nine for the PSP, five for the PlayStation 3, four for the PlayStation 2 and none for the Xbox 360.