Sony who are facing billions in losses and plunging sales of their Bravia TV and Playstation consoles have got some good news this week with the release of figures that show that in the key Japanese market PlayStation 3 outsold the Nintendo Wii in March.

Sony who are facing billions in losses and plunging sales of their Bravia TV and Playstation consoles have got some good news this week with the release of figures that show that in the key Japanese market  PlayStation 3 outsold the Nintendo Wii in March.

This is the first time in 16 months that Sony has outperformed Nintendo who have 54% of the global console market and 64% of the Australian market.

The new found sales success has been attributed to  to hot new PS3 titles from Sega Sammy  and Capcom, a game magazine publisher told Reuters.

Japanese sales of the PS3 came to 146,948 units in the five weeks through March 29, compared with 99,335 units of the Wii and 43,172 units of Microsoft’s Xbox 360, Enterbrain said on Monday.

In an interview with Reuters Mizuho Investors Securities analyst Etsuko Tamura said that despite its strong showing in March, the PS3 is unlikely to threaten the Wii’s global dominance as more software makers are focusing development resources on the Wii, a console with the largest user base among the current generation of hardware.