The figures are in for Japanese hardware performance in the first half of fiscal 2007, and the Wii has outsold the PS3 by nearly four to one.

The figures come from Famitsu publisher Enterbrain and show that the Wii sold 1.6 million units from April to September this year, while Sony sold 385,492 PS3s.

Unsurprisingly, the DS led the market, selling 3.5 million units, while the PSP sold 1 million.

As ever in Japan, the Xbox 360 trailed at the back, selling just 122,565 units.

Good news for all concerned comes with the fact that the Japanese market has expanded 21.7 per cent since the same period last year, bolstered by the arrival of new hardware platforms. The hardware market expanded 33.5 percent to 138.3 billion yen (£0.585 billion) and the software market increased by 12.8 percent to 154.5 billion yen (£0.65 billion).

Despite such runaway success for the Wii in the short term, however, analysts are still predicting that the PS3 will emerge as the dominant home console for this generation. Screen Digest's Nick Parker unveiled predictions that by 2011 the PS3 will have an installed base of 67.5 million, while the Wii will come in behind it with 59.4 million and the 360 will be in 36.4 million homes.^†

The general thinking is that frustration at Sony's lack of first party software support for the PS3 is prompting third parties to hold off development, creating a spiraling lack of support that is putting off consumers. However, this tends to be seen as an interim problem that will be resolved. Parker sums up the sentiment when he says, "Publishers, who are frustrated with Sony, will come hurrying back once the short term vacuum is over".

^{†Source: MCV}