Wii on winning spree, beats PS3, Xbox 360 in Japan

Over the past few months, Nintendo’s Wii has been enjoying big win over its arch-rival in the gaming industry. Continuing its winning-streak, the Japanese gaming console maker’s Wii gaming console once again succeeded in outselling Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox 360.

Nintendo's Wii console that boasts some very innovative features such as its controllers in August was the top-selling console in Japan, outselling Sony’s PlayStation 3 by a ratio of 3 to 1 and the Microsoft’s Xbox 360 over twenty-to-one.

According to fresh sales results provided by market research firm Enterbrain, gamers in Japan bought 245,653 Wii consoles in August, making it the best-selling video game console in the country.

Sony's PlayStation 3 sold 81,541 units, while Microsoft's Xbox 360 managed to move 11,288 units in August, the Enterbrain figures show.

The more-powerful systems PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, though, once again lagged behind in the fierce battle for dominance in the booming gaming consoles market, but it seems that Nintendo's lead over its rivals is becoming narrow, at least for Sony. In the four weeks ending 26 August the Wii outsold the PS3 in Japan by a ratio of three to one, while in July the ratio was more than four to one and in June it was six to one.

Based on the recent sales figures, the Tokyo-based electronics and entertainment conglomerate Nintendo has now sold 3,406,528 Wii consoles in Japan, while Sony has sold 1,143,798 PS3s. Although, Xbox 360 is immensely popular in the United States, it has lagged behind rival machines from Nintendo Co. Ltd. and Sony Corp. in The Land of Rising Sun (Japan). So far, Microsoft has sold 442,000 Xbox 360s in Japan.

Although, Sony got a boost in sales, but still has remained far behind the rival biggies in gaming arena. The Tokyo, Japan-based tech mammoth’s American unit, Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc., or SCEA, in July cut the price of its 60 GB PlayStation 3 game console by $100, or 17 percent, in the United States, in an attempt to regain the market share it is gradually loosing to arch-rivals, Nintendo and Microsoft.

Microsoft also has recently slashed price of Xbox 360 in US, Europe and Australia in order to keep its pace with rival console makers. It has dropped price of the 20-gigabyte Xbox 360 system from US$399 to US$349 in its home market. Besides shaving the price of its high-end version of gaming consoles, the software titan has also reduced the estimated retail price of its cheaper "core" package by US$20 to US$279 and its higher end "Elite" package by US$30 to US$449.

Both Sony and Microsoft are trying hard to enable their gaming consoles to compete more effectively against Wii, but Nintendo is leading all the way with its Wii video games console, the least expensive of the so-called next-generation consoles that costs US$250.

Nintendo’s Wiis’ innovative features, cheaper price and the company’s strategy of targeting average consumers instead of hardcore gamers have helped Nintendo soar that much.

Nintendo Wii was released in the U.S. on November 19, and has ever since been competing with Microsoft’s Xbox360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3. The three biggies in the console arena are currently in a three-way race to the top of the console heap.