Yeah, Ajax. I remember hearing about the bad economy in Japan in the 90s.

LOL, do you even know what you're talking about? Several years ago Japan had a lager yoy eceonomic growth than either Europe or US. The depression in Japan is quite recent, as is in Europe and US and almsot the entire world at the moment.

Let's not overdramatize! Here are last year's numbers, for the week ending October 6th:

Wii 20,956
PS2 11,458
PS3 11,129
360 2,393

Wii is actually doing better this year. PS2's decline is only normal and it looks like XBox360 is getting the sales the PS3 isn't.

Edit : Things are looking grim on the handheld front though, last year's numbers again :

2007

PSP 87,666
DS  84,736

vs

2008

DS 33,998
PSP 19,873

Now that's a huge gap!

Microsoft deserves to have Metal Gear Solid 4 on their platform given these PS3 sales.

:'(

Famitsu

DS 33,998

Wii 21,506

PSP 19,873

PS2 7,527

360 6,690

PS3 5,899

Why is the PS2 still outselling the PS3 in Japan? Sure I understand the PS3 price was high when it launched, but it has gone through 2 holidays now and yet the PS2 still continues to outsell it's big brother. It's really a shame that the Japanese gamers aren't giving the PS3 much love this generation. I never though I'd see the day when Japan gamers would buy more XBox 360, then PS3's for 6 weeks straight. "Hell" must like the North Pole right now with eskimos and polar bears.

 Yeah but their are other factors that let it go in a depression and that is the huge increase of the an old population that doesn't work and a younger population that is decreasing. (Vergrijzing van de bevolking)  it is something that we probably going to have in 10/20 year in Europe aswell.

check a look at the NIkkei chart;

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=%5EN225&t=my&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=

from 1990 the Nikkei index has practicaly gone down with 2003 as a low, then up for 2/3 years and now down again and almost or already at the 2003 low

I'd say the handhelds are being affected by the release of new models very soon: PSP 3000 coming out this week(I believe) and the DSi coming out in November, in Japan.

the nikkei doesn't actually say anything about the economic growth

this is a last year / vs this year graph. As you can see, the Wii is tracking slightly behind last year. We are going into the worst time of the year for sales in Japan, this is nothing to really write home about as it happens all the time.

NOTE: 2008 is missing a few weeks since I don't know where I saved the master graph and don't feel like typing it again.