On the always surprising Japanese market the Nintendo DS still manages to hold on to the first spot in hardware sales, right in front of the PlayStation Portable, as shown by data from the market research firm Media Create.

 

It's the third week this summer when the Nintendo made handheld manages to top the hardware sales charts, with more than 55,000 units sold in seven days. There's not much cause for celebration though, as overall sales have slipped by more than 20,000 units since the previous week.

 

The Sony made PlayStation Portable managed to post a smaller loss in sales, of only about 17,000 units, but also had smaller overall sales, taking second spot in the hardware chart with just over 47,000 devices sold to customers. The dip is probably due to the fact that the platform lacks a killer app, a very well known game that has the power to attract buyers. With the biggest selling videogame ever released for the PSP in Japan, Monster Hunter Portable 2 G from Capcom, now only in the 14th place in the videogame sales chart, Sony is surely interested in getting a developer to create another hit for its console.

 

The Nintendo Wii comes in third, with a little over 35,000 consoles sold, which means that the Nintendo money maker also lost more than 18,000 sales over the previous week. The PlayStation 3 managed to sell just a few consoles over the 9,000 mark while the PlayStation 2 sold a little over 8,000 and the Xbox 360 only managed to move 3,551 consoles.

 

The Konami made J-League Winning Eleven 2008: Club Championship for the PlayStation 2 took number one in the videogame chart with a total of 79,000 copies sold in its first week. Rhythm Tengoku Gold is at number two while the heavily promoted DS title Inazuma Eleven from Level-5 only sold 41,000 units to grab third spot.