With this week's Media Create numbers just rolling in, we can now confirm that the Nintendo 3DS has surpassed the mighty Wii in lifetime sales in Japan.

Powered in part by the recent release of Monster Hunter 4, the 3DS sold nearly 160,000 units in Japan this past week, pushing it to about 12,753,000 in total. The Wii has sold about 12,699,000 units to date, including 965 this past week. It's got a long way to go before it matches its Nintendo handheld elders, however, as the original DS and the Game Boy (including Color upgrade) sold over 32 million units each in Japan. The Wii-U currently sits around 1,078,000.

The full hardware sales read like this:
3DS - 159,388
PS3 - 10,749
WIU - 5,824
PSV - 5,155
PSP - 5,082
WII  - 965
360 - 610


Proportionally, the Xbox 360 sales are shooting through the roof, which should make Microsoft Japan quite satisfied.

3DS momentum is likely to keep up, with Pokemon coming next month, followed by the holiday shopping mania that is the year's end.

first japan... then hopefully the US....
i think european market gave up on nintendo....

"it prints money!"

Congratulations, I guess it can reach the 20m mark in two years or so.

Are you saying you think the 3DS will outsell the Wii in North America? Because that's never going to happen. Wii sold an insane number here. 

I really think that 3DS is a console with plenty of good games, (which maybe lacks of 3rd party games but I hope this will change) which will keep on selling for a long time, may be not as much as DS, but 3DS can approach 100 million of unit sold lifetime.

Christmas will be a good indicator.

Yoshi's the best of the beasts

im just saying the sales would hopefully catch up in the US before the holiday....

i mean come on 30k weekly is a low-average game for a nintendo handheld..... i hope poke will poke the sales for the next few months....

but yeah wii is insane in the US.... but hey who knows... DS sold way above wii, im not saying 3ds will sell as much but it is still do-able

next is psp. 3ds will pass it's 20M mark next year.

I do wonder how well the other 2 will do over there. Almost certain the X1 wont be a huge hit but I wonder how well the PS4 will be accepted. The last two products they launched there didnt do very well, one was quickly taken off the market and the other is seeing a change in implimentation in order to gain relevancy.

England and the UK is not Europe.