New PSP's 250K Japanese debut

The newly redesigned PlayStation Portable Slim has been making an impact on Japanese hardware sales charts. After moving 15,564 PlayStation Portables the week of September 3-9, sales of Sony's portable spiked more than sixfold to 95,487 due to the release of Square Enix's Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII on September 13. The jump in sales was heavily attributed to the limited-edition Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII 10th Anniversary bundle, which included the redesigned portable in advance of its official September 20 launch date.

Sony's winning streak continues into this week, as the latest numbers from Famitsu publisher Enterbrain Inc. project that the first-week sales of the PSP Slim totaled 250,702 units. The PSP Slim has now sold a total of 326,645 units in Japan, as of September 23, 75,943 of which coming from the Crisis Core bundle.

The handheld was first unveiled during this year's E3 Media and Business Summit. According to SCEA president Kaz Hirai, the new device is 33 percent lighter and 19 percent slimmer, and it also packs a more efficient battery, is faster at loading games, and features video-out capabilities.

According to Enterbrain's tally, the combined total of the PSP's new and old model currently sits at 6,217,664 units since the original first went on sale for the island nation in December 2004.