The Japanese market has always been an interesting battlefield in the war of the consoles. Exhibiting an understandable preference to Sony and Nintendo, the market never really embraced XBox while XBox 360 is also struggling. It is therefore of particular interest to see how the two Japanese competitors have fared during this holiday season.
Video game magazine publisher Enterbrain has reported on the Japan sales figures for Nintendo's Wii and Sony's PS3. In all, 466,716 PlayStation 3 consoles were sold in Japan by the end of last month, less than half of its shipment target and of sales of Nintendo's next-gen offering. Sony recently made some noise over its success to meet its target of shipping 1 million PS3 units to North America before the end of 2006 but this was achieved by diverting stock from the November 11 Japanese launch. As a result it is unlikely that Sony met its target of shipping 1 million PS3's to Japan before the end of 2006.
The company has not commented on its Japanese targets but has stressed that it is on target to meet its 6 million unit global target before the end of March 2007. Chapter One of the console wars saga begins with an undoubted Nintendo victory but you have to remember that the Playstation 2 is still selling remarkably well while Nintendo's DS is continually breaking records.
XBox 360 is also doing rather well globally making the most of its one year advantage and of the launch shortages which plagued its rivals.
