The Financial Times reports recent figures from research firm Media Create as indicating that sales of PS3 on its home-turf in Japan have fallen below a weekly 10,000 benchmark "for nearly a month" - apparently this is "a psychological level".

However, analysts are suggesting Sony may not make its shipping target of 11-million consoles worldwide by the end of this year based on this set of data spanning a three-week period.

The actual figures for the last four audited weeks are as follows:

Weeks commencing
30/04/2007 - 12,974
07/05/2007 - 8,839
14/05/2007 - 8,659
21/05/2007 - 9,627

Carlos Dimas, an analyst at HSBC in Tokyo, said, "The 10,000 mark is a psychological level. It is due to the high price of the PS3 and a big dry-out in terms of software. Promising new titles will not be released until September or October."

Hiroshi Kamide, an analyst at KBC Securities, added, "Falling below 10,000 is a lot lower than I had expected. Smaller publishers and suppliers have also been dropping out of the PS3's supply chain because it takes up too much of their resources and they cannot provide for DS or the Wii."

Sony is currently not set to make any money on each PS3 sold until early 2008.

Sony just missed its stated target of 6m shipments PS3s in the last financial year ending 31st March 2007, having shipped 5.5m PS3s and sold around 3.6m units.

Nintendo’s Wii is currently outselling PS3 in Japan five-to-one. Nintendo has said it aims to double global Wii sales to 14 million by the end of this year.

^{Source: Financial Times}