DS Popularity in Japan Confirmed and Dismal Xbox 360 sales continue

Though the results for the entire year aren't quite in yet, Nintendo's DS seems to be the big winner in terms of hardware sales for 2005. The system sold around 598,000 units in Japan last week alone, bringing its year-to-date total up to 3.7 million and its life-to-date number up to 5.2 million. This means that the DS is beating the PSP almost 3 to 1 in that territory, with the PSP racking up 161,000 sales for the week and almost 2.1 million in its liftime. By comparison, even the Playstation 2 only sold 97,000 for the week and 1.8 million for the year, though the system has had a much longer lifespan and an overall greater install base of 11.3 million Japanese units.

On the other end of the spectrum, the Xbox 360 is off to a much more sluggish start in Japan than it was in the U.S. Analysts estimate that as many as 800,000 360s have been sold in the U.S., while Media Create indicates that since the console's December 10 launch in Japan, the next-gen system has moved only 58,000 systems, 5,600 of which were sold in the week ending December 25.