Japanese Hardware: PSP At Top And Bottom Of Charts

Media Create has the sales figures for Japanese hardware this past week (4th - 10th January 2010), and as expected, the PSP is selling like hot cakes on the back of Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep. Sony's UMD handheld is the only platform to sell more units than it did the previous week, with every other console and handheld dropping significantly.

Home Console
Wii: 76,772 (163,855)
PS3: 61,591 (114,368)
360: 5,461 (6,878)
PS2: 3,092 (4,023)

Handheld
PSP: 145,682 (132,911)
DSi: 50,178 (92,461)
DSi LL: 45,221 (70,643)
DS: Lite: 10,067 (17,388)
PSP Go: 2,841 (3,903)

(Previous week's unit sales in brackets for comparison)

The post-holiday season slump continues to bite. In the home console race, the Wii edges out the PS3 by a good margin, but 76,000 is a meagre number compared to the heady weeks leading up to Christmas. It doesn't look like Final Fantasy XIII was the huge saviour of the PS3 as everyone expected it to be either, but its presence in the chart is certainly helping the console stay within distance of its Nintendo rival.

On handhelds, we're used to seeing the DSi sell a lot more than we've seen this week, but with the relative sales of the DSi LL and continuing life of the DS Lite, the combined total for the family of Nintendo's touch-screen platforms isn't really cause for concern. What is, however, is the PSP Go returning to its sales spiral downwards, with the digital-distribution device not even cracking 3,000 units.

Still, at least Sony is in the unique position of having a current-generation console in both first and last place in the chart.