Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP) is beginning to outsell the Nintendo DS, Japanese weekly sales charts reveal.

According to the latest sales figures, for the week commencing 16 January, some 64,600 PSPs were shipped to retailers in Japan, over 10,000 more than the 53,500 DS consoles shipped in the same period.

Of course, Sony has a long way to go to overtake Nintendo's total sales of the DS. The DS launched some weeks ahead of the PSP, and with a much greater number of machines in the channel ready to sell.

And don't forget that the figures cover shipments to retailers, not sales to end users. Shipping product is (relatively) easy; selling them less so.

Last week, Sony Computer Entertainment chief Ken Kutaragi said the company had shipped 800,000-odd PSPs since the handheld console's 12 December 2004 debut. Today, Nintendo said it had shipped 2.84m DS units since its late November launch, though that figure covers both the US and Japan. To date, the PSP has only been officially available in Sony's home territory.

Nintendo now expects to ship 6m units of the console by 31 March, well above its earlier forecast of 5m units, the company said today. ®

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