14 DAY TRIAL // There are two ways of looking at the hardware sales in Japan for the previous week: as long as one treats the Nintendo DS family as one, they managed to take first place in terms of sales; count them separately and you get a more complex picture, with the PlayStation Portable from Sony edging them all out.
The PSP managed to sell 35,233 units, which is significantly less than the close to 60,000 handheld moved during the previous week, when MGS: Peace Walker was launched. Meanwhile, the Nintendo Wii saw a small drop, getting second place with sales of 31,399. The DSi LL is still selling pretty good in Japan, even though Nintendo announced that it would be replacing it with the 3DS, coming in at 26,733, while the PlayStation 3 home console has also seen a slight increase in hardware moved to players, with 26,185.
The Microsoft made Xbox 360 seems stuck with low performances in Japan, managing to sell just 4,278 units, but it still stayed ahead of the now old DS Lite, the PlayStation 2 and the PSP Go which, despite coming out just last year, is only moving about 1,500 units in a seven-day period.
The videogames sales hierarchy is pretty much unchanged at the top. Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2 from Nintendo for the DS handhelds managed to sell 253,000 copies to gamers, keeping its number one place, with Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker from Konami for the PSP again failing to mount a significant first place challenge with sales of 141,000 units. New Super Mario Bros for the Nintendo Wii managed to gain one place to reach third place with 47,000 copies moved to players, with Nintendo also taking over the next two places via Friends Collections and Mario Kart Wii. Super Street Fighter IV from Capcom has seen the biggest drop in the top ten, going to the seventh place from third, with 20,000 copies sold.