Game, set and match: Nintendo wins 4 to 1

Feb 29, 2008 08:36 GMT  ·  By

This is no longer big news: everybody knows that the Wii still sells and the PS3 doesn't. The Xbox 360 sells and the PS3 doesn't. Hell, we could even say that the Uwe Boll films sell and the PS3 doesn't. You got the main idea, since there is one sequence of words that I keep saying.

If further proof is needed, the latest sale charts are here: in February, the Nintendo Wii console outsold the PlayStation 3 nearly 4 to 1 in Japan, with 331,627 Wii units sold, compared to 89,131 units of the PS3, according to Reuters who quote an unnamed game magazine publisher. But, as I said before, this is not such a big surprise: only the numbers seem to fluctuate from one month to another. For example, in January, Nintendo's game console outsold Sony's by almost 3 to 1 in Japan.

And this is not the only reason of joy for Nintendo. It's Super Smash Bros. Brawl recent release became the best seller of the month, with 1.33 million units sold - one million units more than the second placed, another Nintendo-owned piece of software, Wii Fit (309,311 units sold).

Still, in Japan at least, Sony is not quite a loser - Microsoft and their Xbox 360 have bigger problems there, as the Japanese people are not really into that particular gaming console: 14,079 Xbox 360 units were sold. It's a pretty tough job to be the outsider.

One of the reasons for the sales data we have was widely explained in the past and people still fight for the "ultimate truth". However, it seems that the Japanese are not really what you could call hardcore gamers and they prefer the casual-like titles. We all know that Nintendo's Wii job is to bring casual, easy to play and at least interesting to control games, which could give a hint on the reason why this particular console sells so well in Japan (and not only).