Japanese hardware sales, Oct. 4 - Oct. 10: Mining in Chile edition

We have to imagine that the amazing story of the Chilean miners being rescued after languishing underground for 69 days enraptured the Japanese console buying public's attention so much over this past week that, well, they plum stopped buying systems. Aside from a slight uptick in Nintendo DS Lite and PlayStation 2 sales -- outliers, to be clear -- hardware sales across the entire spectrum were down.

Unsurprisingly, the PSP remained in the top position, riding high on the recently released Monster Hunter Portable 3rd demo. In the coming weeks, however, expect to see that little PSP's numbers triple or more -- perhaps you haven't heard, but Monster Hunter is serious business in Japan. Perhaps not as serious as being trapped underground for nearly three months, but, ya know, pretty serious.

[Image credit: Boston.com]

- PSP: 33,683 [DOWN] 3,405 (-9.18%)
- DSi: 22,301 [DOWN] 2,636 (-10.57%)
- DSi LL: 21,777 [DOWN] 2,469 (-10.18%)
- PS3: 19,948 [DOWN] 415 (-2.04%)
- Wii: 12,158 [DOWN] 1,202 (-9.00%)
- DS Lite: 5,960 [UP] 253 (4.43%)
- Xbox 360: 2,746 [DOWN] 23 (-0.83%)
- PS2: 1,373 [UP] 126 (10.10%)
- PSP Go: 1,191 [DOWN] 56 (-4.49%)

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