Playstation 3 sales crash to new low

The Playstation 3 has not even launched in Europe yet

The Playstation 3 was the lowest selling games console in America during the month of January. The Nintendo Wii is still dominating, despite changing fortunes in its home territory of Japan.

Latest sales figures show that Nintendo managed to flog 436,000 Wii consoles in the US during January, eclipsing both the next generation efforts from Microsoft and Sony. The number two selling console remains the grey-bearded seven-year-old Playstation 2 which is available at a knock-down budget price.

That leaves the two heavyweight next-gen consoles slogging it out for third and fourth place, and it's the Microsoft console which remains on top. As we reported yesterday , the 360 is still doing well, selling 294,000 units in January - 50,000 more than the Playstation 3 which shifted only 244,000.

Word in Japan is that the novelty of the Wii has worn off, and that the lack of quality games that take advantage of its motion censing controller has caused fans to grow bored. This could be a sign of things to come in America and Europe if quality games do not arrive soon.

Poor Playstation 3 sales are also being blamed on a lack of good games, as well as an inflated retail price. The Playstation 3 is the most powerful of the three newest consoles, but there are no games on sale currently which are able to fully harness its processing power.

To date the Xbox 360 is the largest selling console of them all, having sold nearly 10.5 million units. This domination is helped of course by the fact that Microsoft was able to ships its console a full year ahead of Sony and Nintendo.

James Rivington

James was part of the TechRadar editorial team for eight years up until 2015 and now works in a senior position for TR's parent company Future. An experienced Content Director with a demonstrated history of working in the media production industry. Skilled in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), E-commerce Optimization, Journalism, Digital Marketing, and Social Media. James can do it all.