Black Friday seems to have had a positive benefit for sluggish sales of not just Sony’s PlayStation 3 but for Nintendo’s Wii system. Over 350,000 Wiis were sold last week, 50,000 more than what was sold the week before that. The Thanksgiving week represents the second-best sales plateau for Nintendo’s latest game console, beaten only by the launch week of the Wii in 2006.

Meanwhile the sales of Sony’s PlayStation 3 increased in November 298% over the sales in October. Part of that dramatic spike in PS3s finding their forever homes must be from Sony’s price drop of the $399 40GB unit. The price drop even had its effect in Japan where the Wii has been the dominant next gen gaming console for consumers: for the first time since the PS3’s launch more of the Sony consoles were sold to gamers than Wiis.

Still if we were Sony we wouldn’t be popping any champagne corks just yet. During the week of November 18-24 an astounding 653,000 Nintendo DS Lite game units were sold in North America. How many Sony PSPs moved off the shelves during that same period of time? Sony reports that it just cracked the 1 million mark in sales of the PSP Slim in Japan and that took two months to accomplish.

Is that Microsoft keeping quiet over in the corner?

via Associated Press