Following the release of data for the
top thirty selling software titles in Japan, market research firm Media Create has also revealed data for hardware sales for the week ending April 8th.
Although software sales were generally down, with few prominent new releases before the all important Golden Week series of holidays at the end of the month, hardware sales have been less affected - despite continued rumors of Nintendo stockpiling consoles.
As usual the best selling console of the week was the Nintendo DS, up from 80,012 units sold last week to a new total of 110,935. The console, which has been supply constrained in Japan ever since the release of the DS Lite model, also passed the 2 million units sold mark this year – with a lifetime total in Japan of over 16 million.
The Wii was up slightly in second place, from 51,365 units sold to 52,583 this week. Nintendo’s lead home console also passed an important milestone last week, with over 1 million units sold so far this year, for a lifetime total of over 2 million in Japan.
Despite the rare appearance of two PSP titles in the software top ten, PSP hardware sales fell significantly from 39,077 the previous week to just 31,503 units.
The PlayStation 3 also saw sales fall from 16,889 units to 14,520. This represents the worst ever week for the console since launch, with a year-to-date total of just 368,343 units and a lifetime total in Japan of 825,901 consoles.
Despite the strong performance of PlayStation 2 software titles, hardware sales for the console also fell, from 17,787 units to 14,234. The Xbox 360 saw hardware sales fall from 3,889 units to 2,963, with the console currently on a lifetime total in Japan of 346,678 units.
The Game Boy Advance family of consoles sold 1,357 units, up from 1,206 the previous week, and the GameCube also rallied slightly from 205 units sold to 255 this week.
