14 DAY TRIAL // The people working at Nintendo are surely smiling all the way to the bank as its consoles are continuing to dominate the hardware and software charts for the Japanese market. Overall sales for videogaming related products went up, although it's unclear whether the sales numbers will be bigger than those registered in 2007.
Nintendo DS sales went up to 204,813 units for the week that has just ended, with most of the handhelds sold being of the new DSi model, while the DS Lite managed to sell some 31,000 units. The Nintendo made portable console is still selling below the levels it managed to hit last year during the same period.
The Nintendo Wii is in second place as it gained 35,000 in sales to reach 91,641 consoles sold in one week. The PlayStation Portable from Sony managed to move 71,540 units, as it remained in third sport in the hardware chart.
The PlayStation 3 continued to outsell the Xbox 360 from Microsoft, reaching 33.688 units compared with 11,797. The nine year old PlayStation 2 is not keeping up with the sales of the other home console and 2009 will probably see Sony withdraw the PS2 from sales on some markets.
In the software chart, Nintendo managed to take over seven of the top ten places. Still, the top selling videogame was a Namco Bandai title. Taiko Drum Master for the Nintendo Wii is a drum simulator including traditional Japanese drums but also a wide variety of Western music. The series has seen an arcade iteration, ported to the PlayStation 2, moved to the Nintendo DS and is now available for the Wii. It sold 106,000 copies.
Animal Crossing: City Folk is at number two in the sales chart, coming from number three, while Kirby Super Star Ultra for the Nintendo DS is in third spot.