Media Create, a Japanese game industry tracking firm, has released figures for console sales for the first week of April, and the results show that Nintendo is the big winner by coming in with the DS and Wii in first and second place, respectively.
The DS continues to be Nintendo’s sales juggernaut in Japan selling 110,935 units — up from 80,012 machines sold the previous week. The Wii sold 52,583 units during the same period of time and increased its sales numbers by about 1,200 additional consoles.
Sony’s PS3 saw its sales actually fall from 16,889 to 14,520 units. This is the lowest weekly sales figures that the PlayStation 3 has received since its launch last November. The total numbers of PS3s sold in Japan is now at 825,901 while the Wii has sold over 2 million. The DS obliterates both console figures with over 16 million units sold since its debut in 2004.
Microsoft continues to bring up the rear by tallying only 2,863 sales in Japan with 346,678 total units sold to date. The Xbox 360 was launched in November of 2005.
Japan was once considered Sony’s exclusive territory and kingdom for console gaming, but the company has taken a sharp dive from being the undisputed leader of the pack to that of a third place contender. With sales dwindling and the recent news of Sony discontinuing the 20GB model for sale in North America, the writing is on the wall on regarding what Sony must do to reverse this downward trend. The big question is this: is it too late?
[via Gamasutra]
