14 DAY TRIAL // It's Monday, so you must be eager to hear the news coming from Japan, the only country that lets us take a weekly look at the state of videogame related sales. Courtesy of market research firm Media Crate, we can now bring you the trends for the week that ended on June 22.
On the hardware front is seems that following strong initial sales spurred by the release of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots the PlayStation 3 from Sony is now again tripping, giving up its front runner states and slipping into fourth place, sales wise. The PlayStation Portable is again the best sold gaming device, with more than 59,000 units sold in the timeframe. The Wii is placed second, at a considerable distance, with a little over 41,000 consoles sold while the Nintendo DS handheld has just managed to sell 36,000 units.
The PS3 is still selling better than usual, with sales double those of a regular week, which shows us the MGS4 and Solid Snake are still having an impact on the number of units bought. The PlayStation 2 is still selling better than the Xbox 360 from Microsoft, with 6,346 units sold to 2,555.
Super Robot Taisen A Portable is the title responsible for pushing MGS4 to second place and for slowing PlayStation 3 sales. It managed to sell almost 40,000 copies more than the Hideo Kojima title, while Super Mario Stadium: Family Baseball is also gunning for the second spot.
It's likely that the people over at Sony are rather disappointed with the performance of their console, considering the hype surrounding the release of such a PS3 exclusive.
A more complete picture of the impact that Metal Gear Solid 4 has had on the console market will be available once NPD presents its numbers for June, which is in about two weeks.