Figures from research firm Media Create show that Sony’s PSP hand-held has outsold the Nintendo DS in Japan for the first time in over a year.
For the week ending September 16, the PSP sold a total of 95,487 units, a massive jump of nearly 80,000 units over the previous week that put it at the top of the console sales chart in Japan. The sales spike is attributed primarily to the recent release of the PSP Slim and Lite, as well as the new Final Fantasy title for the PSP, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII.
The DS, meanwhile, took second place on the chart with 79,974 units sold. Nintendo has been struggling with sluggish sales in Japan this month, with weekly DS sales falling below 100,000 units for the first time this year in the first week of September. Sales for the past week had leveled off the slide experienced by the DS over the first half of the month, but are still well below expectations.
Rounding out the week’s sales chart in Japan are the Nintendo Wii in third place with 26,181 units sold, followed by 13,128 units of the still-swinging PlayStation 2 and 13,101 PlayStation 3 systems. The Xbox 360 continues to languish in console purgatory with sales of 1,243 units, but it did manage to beat out the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo GameCube, which sold 836 and 97 units respectively.
