Nintendo not worried by PS3's Japan surge
Has a whole year to regain lead, it says.
Nintendo is "not particularly concerned" about PlayStation 3 being the best-selling console in Japan during March, actually.
"It is still the first few months of the year when sales are slow for the industry," the Mario-maker told the Financial Times, "so we are not particularly concerned."
And, Nintendo added: "We hope to line up strong software to support hardware sales in the second half of the year."
The PlayStation 3 sold 146,948 units last month in Japan while the Wii shifted 99,335 units, according to yesterday's Enterbrain figures. The success of the Sony console is attributed to the arrival of Yakuza 3 and Resident Evil 5.
The Wii, however, has soundly thrashed console competition in Japan for some time. Nintendo's flagship console has an installed base of 8 million across the region compared to the PS3's reach of 3 million.
Nintendo also continues to dominate on a global scale: Wii sales were well over double those for PS3 during February in the US.
As of 31st December 2008, the Wii leads the seventh generation of consoles with 44.96 million worldwide sales, with shipments at 50 million. Microsoft's Xbox 360 is next with 28.5 million sales, followed by PlayStation 3 with 21.3 million sales.