Another week in Japan: Hardware and software numbers 12/10-12/16

So, how did the fair Wii fare in the land of the rising sun this week? Regarding hardware sales, the Wii just barely eked out in front of the PSP to take second place with 168,000 units sold, jumping up over 50,000 units from last week. As for the software, there's some good and bad news. Check after the break to see the numbers.

Hardware:

• DS: 249,000
• Wii:168,000
• PSP: 158,000
• PS3: 53,000
• PS2: 21,000
• Xbox 360: 8,700

Software:

1. Mario Party DS (DS) ---160,000 (763,000)
2. Wii Fit (Wii) --- 120,000 (527,000)
3. Gran Turismo 5 Prologue (PS3) --- 108,000
   
4. Dragon Quest IV (DS) --- 78,000 (854,000)
5. Professor Layton and Pandora's Box (DS) --- 73,000 (482,000)
6. Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) --- 71,000 (571,000)
7. Wii Sports (Wii) --- 68,000 (2.26 million)
8. Wii Play (Wii) --- 67,000 (1.81 million)
9. Mario & Sonic at Beijing Olympics (Wii) --- 58,000 (207,000)
10. Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon (Wii) --- 44,000

The software numbers show that first-party games had a lot of success this week. Wii Fit fell back into the second place spot, while Super Mario Galaxy jumped up to sixth place. Meanwhile, Wii Sports, Wii Play, and Sega's Mario and Sonic all managed to find their way back into the top ten. Then, finally, at number ten, we have Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon, which sold 44,000 copies in its first week. While not great by any means, it's not too bad of a start for Square Enix's title, especially if the game proves to have legs.

Unfortunately, things did not go as well for some of the other third-party releases this week. Here are the Wii games that bombed:

• NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams --- 17,000
• We Love Golf! --- 8,600
• Soul Calibur Legends --- 6,900
• Shikigami no Shiro 3 --- 970

There's not much to say other then these numbers are not good. Perhaps it's an issue of there being too many games, thus leading to cannibalizing Wii software sales, or maybe there just wasn't enough advertising for these titles, but the bad numbers are ultimately what counts. One interesting thing to note is that Shikigami no Shiro 3 sold three times more copies (3,100) for the Xbox 360, which has a much smaller userbase in Japan. Of course, that could just have to do with 360 owners having a lot less games to choose from.

[Via NeoGAF]