After a fairly dramatic drop in its second week, the PlayStation Vita's sales in Japan continue to decline. According to Media Create figures published by Japanese site 4gamer, the Vita sold 42,648 units in the week starting December 26th, taking fourth place in the hardware charts. The Nintendo 3DS, however, continued its run of strong sales with 197,952 systems sold and five of the top ten software titles. It's worth noting that sales for all current systems fell last week, with the 3DS's figures being less than half of the previous week's total, so it's perhaps unfair to single out the Vita. Nevertheless, with Sony's latest (and arguably greatest) being outsold by the PSP and 3DS in every full week since the launch weekend, it certainly could have had a better start.

Elsewhere, Famitsu published Enterbrain's figures for the whole of 2011, revealing that the Japanese games industry shrunk overall by 8% in the calendar year. The 3DS took top spot in the yearly hardware sales, with over 4 million systems sold since its launch in February. Sony's PSP was next, moving close to 2 million units, and the PlayStation 3 was the best-selling home console in 2011 with nearly 1.5 million sold.