Sony will be pleased to hear that after last week’s increase in sales of the Vita the console has seen a 150% increase in sales in the previous weeks thanks to Persona 4.
After an agonizing couple of months, the PlayStation Vita has finally started picking up in the sales department. The sales of the console have skyrocketed in Japan from 13,383 units sold last week to 34,459 units this week.
The leap in sales sees the Vita overtake its elder, more experienced cousin, the PlayStation 3. The Vita now sits in second place, above both the PS3 and the PlayStation Portable. However, the sales figures for the Vita are just over half of what the Nintendo 3DS managed to sell during the same time period as well.
Nintendo’s ‘comeback’ portable gaming console has been topping the charts ever since the price cut had been announced last year and the previous week’s figure stood at an impressive 61,793 units.
Here is the hardware sales chart for Japan for the week ending June 17.
1. Nintendo 3DS: 61,793 units sold
2. PlayStation Vita: 34,459 units sold
3. PlayStation 3: 14,673 units sold
4. PlayStation Portable: 9,740 units sold
5. Nintendo Wii: 5,963 units sold
For those readers wondering where the Xbox 360 is, well the console is in seventh place with 1,084 units sold, which is 153 units less than the PlayStation 2 managed to sell during the same time period.
The increase in sales can be attributed to the release of Person 4: The Golden by Atlus. The game topped the Japanese software chart in its debut week and is one of only two PlayStation Vita titles in the top 20, the other game being Gundam Seed Battle Destiny, which is in 11th place.
However, the trend only shows what Sony has been pointing out since the console’s launch and that is the fact that when high quality content is made available for the console it will begin to show improvements in sales.
At the same time, one could draw a line between the Japanese market and the European and North American one as the trends, tastes and preferences in content are poles apart. So an increase in sales in Japan does not necessarily equal an increase in sales in other regions as well.
Sony has been working at bringing premium, triple-A content to the Vita with titles such as Assassin’s Creed: Liberation, Call of Duty Black Ops: Declassified and BioShock set to hit the console in the near future.
However, until games such as those are released, the Vita will see the same trend in its sales patterns in the west.
That’s it for this week’s look at the Japanese hardware sales charts.
Survey shows mobile gaming market is expanding due to freemium and tablets 
Crysis 3 dev slams Unreal Engine 4, claims competition is three years behind 
Sony executives take massive pay cuts after record losses
Sleeping Dogs to feature voices of Emma Stone and Lucy Liu
Dishonored developer voices concern over lack of variety in industry
PlayStation Vita getting Gran Turismo?
Zynga’s Bubble Safari runs at 60-fps on Facebook