Nintendo Continues Domination of Japanese Market

Nintendo hardware continues to put the boots to its competition in Japan, handily outselling systems from Sony and Microsoft despite a slight dip in actual units sold.

The handheld Nintendo DS sold 123,211 units for the week ending June 3, nearly five times the 26,358 Sony PSP systems that sold over the same period. Year-to-date, Nintendo has cranked out nearly 3.5 million DS units, while Sony has yet to break the 1 million mark.

Nintendo is also dominating the Japanese market for standard consoles; the Wii sold 69,748 units last week, for a year-to-date total of over 1.6 million, while Sony's PlayStation 3 pushed out 8,998 units, moving up to total sales of 453,179 on the year. Microsoft's Xbox 360 console, edging ever-closer to irrelevance in Japan, sold 2,219 units for the week, running its year-to-date sales total to 101,944 units.

And in what must be a case of simultaneous good news-bad news for Sony in Japan, their previous-generation PlayStation 2 console continues to sell well and actually outperformed the PlayStation 3 for the week, selling 11,814 units and ringing up a year-to-date unit sales total of 369,024.