Monthly sales of Sony’s PlayStation 3 (PS3) games console in Japan have overtaken those of rival Nintendo Wii for the first time.

Boosted by price cuts and the introduction of a cheaper version, PS3 sales totalled 183,217 in November, compared with 159,193 for the Wii.

The closely-watched figures from game magazine publisher Enterbrain will come as a welcome boost for Sony.

But analysts predict that the Wii will continue to dominate globally.

Sustainable trend?

“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,” said KBC Securities analyst Hiroshi Kamide.

Both the PS3 and the Wii were launched towards the end of last year.

Since then there have been some months in which five or six times as many Wii consoles have been sold in Japan.

“It’s nice to see the PS3 selling much better than six months ago,” added Mr Kamide.

“But is it a sustainable trend? Is it going to really escalate from here? I’m not so sure.”

The Wii has benefited from a much lower price compared with both the PS3 and Microsoft’s XBox, but also from the novelty of its handset, which is fitted with a motion sensor.

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The deadline for declaring an intent to bid on that sweet, sweet 700MHz spectrum in the US is December 3rd. According to the Wall Street Journal, Google will announce their intent, today. Hear that Verizon? All your legal posturing and lobbying to block the Open Access (only to about-face with talk of your own openness) have seemingly been for naught. Now it’s time to put up or shut up in what’s anticipated to be a very costly bidding war for the prime “C” block swath in January.

[Via mocoNews]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Filed under: Cellphones

Rumors are circulating that Motorola is prepped to launch a series of multimedia handsets under the ZiNE brand. Meanwhile, Moto was just spotted (November 26th, to be exact) begging the USPTO for a trademark on “DEXT.” That’s the rather serious looking mark pictured to the right which sounds like a mashup of DECT and NEXT. The request covers “mobile telephones, pagers, radio transceivers, electronic personal organizers, headsets, microphones, speakers” and the related software for such things as the transmission of audio and video. We’ll just have to wait and see whether this has anything to do with their accidentally on purposely “leaked” 2008 lineup.

[Via Trademork]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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