14 DAY TRIAL // Another week has gone by, which means we should take another look at the situation of hardware and software sales in Japan. Research firm Media Create has again posted the numbers for the week that ended on May 23 and we'll be serving up a bit of analysis alongside the figures.
Both hardware and software sales registered a drop in the analyzed interval, but the latter suffered much more than gaming consoles in terms of sales. The PlayStation Portable seems to have an iron grip on the first spot in sales, with a bit over 70,000 consoles sold, which registered as both a win and as a loss, because it sold over 19,000 units less than in the previous week.
The Nintendo Wii dropped even more, somewhere around 41,000 thousand, with over 25,000 units less than in the previous week, but it made it on second place, while the DS came in third, with a smaller drop than any of the top three consoles and sales of around 35,000 units.
The PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation 2 from Sony have almost equal sales, of 7,701 for the first console and 7,022 for its last generation cousin. They both sold more than the Xbox 360 from Microsoft, which only managed to move 1,298 units during last week.
The week will be remembered as the moment when the Nintendo Wii managed to cross the 6 million sales barrier, which qualifies as one of the biggest console successes in Japan.
Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G still takes first spot in videogame sales, although with much lower sales than usual at 53,000 copies moved, while Mario Kart Wii is hot on its tail, with some 42,000 copies of the game reaching players. Luminous Arc 2: Will for the Nintendo DS is a new release that broke into the top three, selling 41,000 copies. The Wii Fit is fifth in sales this week.