PlayStation Portable Still on Top, Nintendo DS Steadily Running out of Steam

With the NPD numbers for May out on Friday, the videogame industry is now looking to Japan for hardware and software charts to see who is moving up and who is going down. Research firm Media Create has released the numbers for last week and it seems that in Japan the PlayStation Portable is still king, even if sales are continuing to drop.

In all fairness, all gaming devices have registered falls in sales during the week, most likely because of the fact that the summer season is not usually that "hot" when it comes to gaming, as most developers are preparing their major titles for a fall and holiday season release.

Even if it is the top performer, the PSP only managed to push a little over 62,000 consoles while its closest competitor, the Nintendo Wii, also lost 6,000 units of sales to reach a figure of 44,000. The Nintendo DS sold a little over 35,000 units, seeing a drop in numbers of about 2,000 units.

The PlayStation 3 figures were marginally up, managing to sell more than 10,000 units because of the release of Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit, which has a cult following in Japan. The PlayStation 2 again managed to outsell the Xbox 360. The former console moved just over 6,000 units, while the Microsoft gaming console managed sales of 2,280 units.

The above mentioned Dragon Ball Z game performed very well in the software chart, taking top spot in the first week of release, with more than 92,000 copies sold in Japan. Another new entry was at number two in the form of Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer 3 from SEGA. Mario Kart is now at number 4, while Wii Fit is trailing at number 7.

The most important ongoing development seems to be the steady decline of sales for the Nintendo DS, which at one point dominated the hardware chart, despite the fact that new games are being released for the platform. This means that the userbase for the handheld gaming device has likely been reached and Nintendo should really be thinking hard about a replacement.