Sony, meet Square-Enix. Now, bow and say, "arigatou gozaimasu" (thank you). Good.
For the week ending September 16th, Sony’s handheld sold over six times the number of units as it did during the previous week in Japan. The 95,487 PSPs sold were even enough to top not one, but BOTH of Nintendo’s consoles for that seven-day period (almost combined!). In the week ending Spetember 9th, a mere 15,564 PSPs were carried out of stores.
How could this have happened? What witchcraft could possibly dethrone Nintendo in the land of the rising sun?
Final. Fantasy…7.
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII just so happened to be released in Japan last week, and sold over 487,000 copies. Now I’m not saying these sales figures are directly connected (but I really am), but there’s a chance that one could have influenced the other in some small (read: HUGE) way.
Here are the console sales numbers for the week in question:
1. PlayStation Portable: 95,487
2. Nintendo DS: 79,974
3. Nintendo Wii: 26,181
4. PlayStation 2: 13,128
5. PlayStation 3: 13,101
6. Xbox 360: 1243
7. Game Boy Advance: 836
8. Nintendo GameCube: 97