Japanese Hardware: Advent Children Pushes PS3 To Top

Although Japanese software sales are currently at the lowest levels seen in in years, hardware sales get a boost this week on the PlayStation 3. The release of the new Blu-ray edition of movie Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, which contains a playable demo of Final Fantasy XIII, has seen PS3 sales shoot up by over 42,000 units to 62,527. Media Create says Advent Children Complete enjoyed a first week debut of 274,774 units. This easily outsold Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of the Sky on the Nintendo DS –- the best-selling video game of the week on 142,000 units. Results for the other hardware platforms were less impressive, with the DS only just clinging on to second place as sales fell almost 3,000 units to 44,725 (38,287 on the DSi and 6,438 on the DS Lite). PSP sales fell by around 800 units to 40,065 – outselling the DSi for the first time in several weeks. Wii sales continued to fall, down over 2,000 units to 13,221 and now well within reach of the Xbox 360. Media Create's lifetime total for the Wii in Japan now stands at 7,910,734 – still below the 8 million milestone claimed by rival chart compiler Enterbrain earlier in the week. However, Media Create did confirm that the Xbox 360 had passed the 1 million mark this week, following recent celebrations by Microsoft in Japan. Sales were still down though, falling 1,500 units to 8,652. PlayStation 2 sales were static at 4,230 units. Overall in the software top 50, there were 24 titles for the Nintendo DS, nine for the Wii, seven for the PlayStation 3, six for the PSP, three for the PlayStation 2 and one for the Xbox 360.