Sony PS3 tops Nintendo Wii in Japan for first time

By Kiyoshi Takenaka

TOKYO (Reuters) - Sony Corp's PlayStation 3 outsold Nintendo Co Ltd's Wii game console in Japan in November for the first time, raising the prospect that Sony might regain its dominance in the global videogame market.

Sony, which launched the consoles a year ago, sold 183,217 PS3 in Japan in the four weeks to Nov. 25, topping sales of 159,193 Wii consoles, according to game magazine publisher Enterbrain, a key watcher of trends in the sector.

Sony dominated the game industry for about a decade with previous generations of its PlayStations but lost its crown to the low-cost Wii with its new idea of a motion sensor in the control unit.

This opened the way to a whole new range of games and even exercise programs and helped expand the gaming population beyond core users of young males to women and the elderly.

"Wii Sports", one of the most popular game titles for the Wii, allows grandparents to have a virtual tennis match with their grandchildren in a living room.

Analysts said the latest data was encouraging for the prospects of the PS3, but it was too early to paint a rosy picture for the Sony machine.

"Overseas, I don't really see the PS3 doing that much at Christmas time primarily because it's still more expensive than the other machines and has less software," KBC Securities analyst Hiroshi Kamide said.

"It's nice to see the system selling much better than six months ago. But is it a sustainable trend? Is it going to really escalate from here? I'm not so sure."