Nintendo Wii still wins…
The temporary resurgence of the PlayStation 3 looks to be well and truly over as the hot-selling Nintendo Wii continues its drive to fully conquer the gaming hardware charts by lodging yet another month of impressive sales numbers.
More specifically, according to Japanese videogame magazine publisher Enterbrain, which publishes leading games magazine Famitsu, March saw Sony’s powerhouse console left in the retail shadows to a ratio of 3-to-1 by the diminutive and apparently muscle-free Nintendo Wii.
According to Enterbrain’s figures for the Japanese region, Nintendo managed to sell a solid 265,542 units of the innovative and demographic-busting Wii in the month of March, while Sony only saw a modest 81,579 units of its growling PS3 leave store shelves over the same period.
Both the Wii and the PlayStation continued their combined regional dominance over Microsoft’s ailing Xbox 360 console, which limped in (once again) as the month’s poorest hardware performer with a meagre 13,127 unit sales.
Doubtless surprising power-hungry fanboys and industry sceptics alike with its ability to hold consumer attention for such a long period of time, the innovative, motion-sensing and user-friendly Nintendo Wii has almost effortlessly swallowed up the global home console competition since its release at the tail end of 2006. This has come about, in the main, because of the console appealing to a much wider audience than its more expensive hardcore gaming rivals.
March wasn’t all good news for Nintendo though, with Enterbrain’s figures also revealing that the Nintendo DS handheld (the world’s most popular games console) was overtaken in monthly sales by Sony’s PlayStation Portable — something that hasn’t happened in half a year.
On the handheld scene, Nintendo sold a steady 255,124 units of the touch-screen DS, while Sony surged forward with 415,415 unit sales of the widescreen PlayStation Portable. The PSP’s sudden sales leap was probably fuelled by the software arrival of Monster Hunter Freedom 2G, which emerged as the top-selling game during March.
