Wii stiill ruules roost iin Jaapan

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 04 September 2007 00:00

Opinion and Analysis

Although Nintendo’s wily Wii is still winning the hearts and minds of Japanese consumers, outselling the PS3 by 3-to-1, the PS3 is slowly catching up and Xbox 360 sales trickle through – with Christmas crunchtime sales still to come.

Reports from Bloomberg and others have quoted Japanese research company Enterbrain’s figures, showing that in August, Nintendo sold 245,653 Wii consoles, Sony sold 81,541 PS3’s and Microsoft sold 11,288 Xbox 360’s in the Japanese market.

These new figures put Nintendo at a 3-to-1 advantage over Sony, although the lead has fallen – the sales figures for July had put Nintendo at a 4-to-1 advantage, falling from a 6-to-1 advantage earlier in the year.

This brings total sales of consoles in Japan to 3,406,528 for the Wii, 1,143,798 for the PS3 and 442,290 for the Xbox 360, showing that although Nintendo’s lead has narrowed a little over Sony, both Sony and Microsoft still have a long way to go to catch up.

 Of course, the all important Christmas/end-of-year holiday shopping season is yet to arrive in 2007, and should herald a period in games console history of unprecedented promotions, blockbuster games launches and frenetic marketing activity worldwide.

While the Wii has coasted on the success of the revolutionary ‘Wii Sports’ title, along with a few other great games, some big Nintendo hits are still on their way to consumers before the end of the year, including the new Wii Fit title that Nintendo hopes will be as popular as the Wii Sports phenomenon.

The same goes for Sony’s PS3, which is due to receive the latest Gran Turismo installment, among other titles, while Microsoft have just had a massive hit with Bioshock and are expecting an even more massive hit with the upcoming Halo 3 title

So, will the Wii still be top dog in Japan come 2008? We still think a resounding yes is the answer, but finally the ugly duckling that was the PS3 is finally starting to blossom into a beautiful swan, with even Microsoft set to reach over 500,000 Xbox 360 sales in Japan before the year is out.