Sony's price cut on the PlayStation 3, and the introduction of a worse-value 40GB model, seem to have increased sales by 250-300%, reports GamesIndustry.biz.
"It's the breakthrough we've been anticipating," Sony chairman and CEO Howard Stringer told The Associated Press. "We've been holding our breath."
He added: "It's a little fortuitous that the Wii is running out of hardware."
Put the two together and you get the latest GamesIndustry.biz headline: PS3 outsells Wii in Japan. Sales in Japan only for the week ending November 11 were, on Media Create's numbers:
1. Nintendo DS: 78,884 2. PlayStation Portable: 58,964 3. PlayStation 3: 55,924 4. Nintendo Wii: 34,456 5. PlayStation 2: 9,043 6. Xbox 360: 5,817
Amusingly enough, the previous week's headline was Xbox 360 outsells PlayStation 3 in Japan. In this case, the Xbox 360 sold 17,673 units thanks to the release of Namco Bandai's Ace Combat 6, while the PS3 only sold 17,434 units.
I think the moral is not to set too much store by one week's figures, or one country's figures, especially not a week where something like Halo 3 (Xbox 360 Outsells Wii) or a Super Mario game comes out. Over the long term, the Wii still looks like the winner, but the PS3 may not be as dead as it looked.
We've never had a three-way tie before, but that would certainly make for an interesting time in the next round of the console wars.
