Report: Wii outsells PS3 in Japan

The final tally of the holiday sales of the Wii and PlayStation 3 in North America may still be up in the air (NPD is expected to release its official figures this Thursday), but across the Pacific Ocean, the first wave of numbers are in.

Nintendo's Wii won the head-to-head battle for Japan against its rival, the Sony PlayStation 3, according to Reuters via Japanese magazine publisher Enterbrain. The article in the magazine claims that 989,118 Wiis were sold in Japan between the console's December 2 launch through the end of the year. Sony, on the other hand, reportedly sold 466,716 PS3s in Japan between that system's launch on November 11 and the end of December.

The Enterbrain information also suggests that Sony may have missed its PS3 shipment targets at the cost of its home country. Earlier this week, Sony announced that it had shipped 1 million PS3s to North America--half of what the company had planned to ship worldwide by the end of the year--only by diverting stock from Japan.

With less than 500,000 units sold in Japan in 2006, Reuters infers Sony did not meet its target of 2 million units shipped through the end of the year, a target that was "within reach," according to Sony, as recently as mid-December.

Sony plans to ship 6 million PS3s worldwide by the end of March.