games: PS3 Outstrips Wii in Japan
I’m sure the guys over at Sony were celebrating this week, as for the first time in 16 months Sony’s console has beaten it’s competitor, the Nintendo Wii, smashing it with unit sales of 146,948 to 99,335. These figures, from gaming research group Enterbrain, highlight the Japanese console sales last month.
It comes as a nice change for the PS3 lads, after they’ve had little to cheer abut recently. The spike in sales is undoubtedly credited to Yakuza 3 and Resident Evil 5 debuting last month, which gamers have been dying to get their mitts on. The games came in first and second respectively on the games software sales chart for that period.
The news makes Sony’s John Koller look rather psychic, after he described last week how the company expected PS3 and Playstation Portable sales to shoot up by an ambitious 10-15% worldwide following a “bullish” approach to sales.
Which isn’t to say that Sony is relaxing and sitting pretty, as exemplified by Koller’s scathing attack on Nintendo’s DSi, in a statement to Engadget. He claimed that the DSi brought nothing new to the games market and that 3rd party publishers struggle to release successful software on the platform.
“If Nintendo is really committed to reaching a broader, more diverse audience of gamers beyond the ‘kids’ market that they’ve always engaged, there isn’t much new with the DSi to support that,” said Koller.
Unsurprisingly, the Sony man thinks that the PSP not only reaches wider audiences, but also provides more consumer choice.
“We have many blockbuster franchises from our publishing partners launching this year, representing a wide variety of genres and targeting diverse demographics.”
But the proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the munching and retailers are already reporting vast interest in the DSi no matter what Sony might claim.
If you’ve picked up the DSi be sure to drop us a comment to let us know what you think.
LKW
