The nation of Japan started 2009 off rather slowly in hardware sales terms. Buying slowed to a crawl overseas, as they tend to do, at the turn of a new year.
With virtually nothing hitting Japanese retail shelves this past week, 2008′s biggest releases got another chance to shine, sales-wise. That keeps Square-Enix’s Dissidia: Final Fantasy at the number one spot for one more week.
Japan’s best-selling Dissidia: Final Fantasy helped the PSP outsell the Wii this week, even though it couldn’t muster enough sales to dethrone the Nintendo DSi. Also seeing a big boost was the PlayStation 3.
The holidays were very good to Nintendo in Japan, with hardware sales big enough to translate to a second bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken on Christmas Eve. We’re talking 380,000 game machines moved in a week.
Weekly sales of the Nintendo DSi in Japan have doubled over where they were just two weeks prior, moving an impressive 173,000 this week. Overall, Nintendo sold almost 300,000 hardware units to Japanese consumers.
Sales of the Nintendo DSi on its home turf were way up this week after dipping into “just awesome enough” territory the week prior. Nintendo moved another 126K, according to Media Create.
Nintendo DSi sales are still HOT in Japan, with the camera-equipped revision moving another 88,000-plus units last week. The PSP also got a major shot in the arm, thanks to the latest Gundam release.
It was a down week for hardware sales in Japan, with the Wii the only platform to see an uptick in sales week-to-week. The recently launched Nintendo DSi still tops the charts and is in no danger of losing its position to any of its hardware competitors. It does about half of the total hardware sales for the week of November 10 to 16. PlayStation 3 sales stay solid amid a half-dozen new releases over the past month, including Way of the Samurai 3, Resistance 2 and Grand Theft Auto IV. Wonder how long the DS Lite will continue to chart…
After last week‘s exciting new hardware debuts, the Japanese hardware sales charts calm down a bit. Sure, the Nintendo DSi is still selling like gangbusters, but the PlayStation 3 starts its journey downward into more normal territory, moving less than half of what it did the week prior. On the flip side of the hi-def console war, the Xbox 360 doubles its week-to-week sales in Japan, making this pie chart a lot less red and a lot more lime green.
The PlayStation 3 hasn’t had a good couple of weeks, with sales bottoming out at just 3,931 according to Media Create. Fortunately for Sony, the PS3′s fortunes have changed in a major way with the introduction of a new 80GB model and bundles featuring LittleBigPlanet and Gran Turismo 5 Prologue Spec III, with a ten times increase week to week. GTA IV‘s stellar sales certainly didn’t hurt.
