The situation with the PSP is like night and day between the East and West. While many have fallen into the thought that the PSP is “dead” in North America and Europe, Sony’s portable couldn’t be more alive in Asia; it’s usually high on the hardware sales charts — especially within the last year and a half — and almost always seeing its software performing well. As one example, this past week it shifted almost 50,000 more units, doubling the second place system on the charts, which in this case was Nintendo’s new 3DS.
Here’s the full ranking, including numbers of retail units sold:
PSP (all versions) – 49,427
3DS – 23,038
PS3 – 19,033
DS (all versions) – 13,561
Wii – 7,866
Xbox 360 – 1,891
PS2 – 1,163
The PSP’s sales this most recent week are fueled by its software, with the highly anticipated Super Robot Wars Z having arrived on shelves not long ago, Atlus RPG Persona 2 doing the same, the best-looking portable version of Pro Baseball Spirits just dropping, and love adventure Amagami also showing up in April. PSP oldies-but-goodies like Final Fantasy IV and Monster Hunter Portable 3 are also still hanging around the top 20 on the software charts. I say “old” in a relative sense, as they’re not old, but to be still charting after being out for a month (FFIV) or five (MH3) is impressive.
With Final Promise Story shipping today and other big PSP games still on the horizon, Japanese sales are almost surely going to stay solid for some time to come.
The biggest contributor to the DS sales was the DSiLL, claiming a tad more than 7,000 of those. The standard DSi took 6k more while the DSLite picked up the change. PSPgo sold a whopping 265 units out of those nearly 50 thousand. Believe it or not, that’s actually a huge spike for the system, representing more than a 25 per cent increase in what it usually sells. Perhaps is was spurred on by the fact that it’s no longer in production? Either way, physical media triumphs for now.
[Source]
