TOKYO (AFP) — Nintendo’s Wii outsold rival Sony’s PlayStation 3 (PS3) three-fold in Japan last year, helping the country’s multi-billion dollar video game market to notch up its best ever year, a survey showed Monday.

Nintendo sold about 3.63 million Wii consoles in its home market in 2007 while Sony sold 1.21 million PS3s, according to magazine publisher Enterbrain.

The Wii also trounced the PS3 more than three-fold in the key year-end sales period between November 25 and December 30, selling 774,123 Wii consoles against Sony’s sales of 232,421 PS3s, the survey showed.

Nintendo won back its lead after the two rivals briefly traded places in November, when the PS3 outsold the Wii in Japan for the first time, helped by a price cut and a stronger line-up of games, according to Enterbrain.

Sony’s game unit said Monday that it had sold 1.2 million PS3s in North America during the holiday shopping period after a hefty price cut.

“The PlayStation brand ended the year in a very strong position and clearly indicates more positive momentum going into 2008,” Jack Tretton, head of Sony Computer Entertainment in the US, said in a statement.

Analysts said that although PS3 sales appear to be improving after a tough first year, in terms of sales it is still far behind the Wii.

“Consumers both in Japan and overseas are still attracted by the Wii, which remains a fresh concept,” said Hiroshi Kamide, a game analyst at KBC Securities.

The Wii also retains a three-fold sales advantage over the PS3 in North America, where Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is also posing competition for Sony, he said.

Sony “either has to slash the price further or increase the number of games available, which is something software makers are reluctant to do” because there are too few owners in the US to make it worthwhile, he added.

Microsoft sold 257,841 Xbox 360s last year in Japan, continuing to struggle on its rivals’ home turf two years after the console’s launch, the survey showed.

Japan’s total computer game market was worth a record 687.7 billion yen (6.37 billion dollars) in 2007, up 9.9 percent from the previous year, Enterbrain said.

The market was buoyed by robust sales of Nintendo’s DS and the Lite version handheld consoles, which have sold a total of just over 21 million units since the initial launch three years ago, it added.

Software sales were also strong, with games for Nintendo consoles making up four of the five top-selling games, the survey showed.

It’s that time of the week again. The time where we sit back and wonder how Nintendo can improve on the Wii. Well, that’s easy, they need to Do Work! If you remember last week’s episode, I talked about the downfalls of online play with the Wii. There are many inadequacies of playing the Wii online but, one in particular stands out above the others: Voice chat. Where voice chat on the Wii is concerned, it is very nearly an epic fail.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, how can it be such a failure when it’s virtually nonexistent? It’s lack of existence is a failure on Ninty’s part. I mean, you make the ultimate casual/party console, give it free online play and leave out voice chat. Really? That makes sense to you? The online market is one of the main driving forces behind console sales these days. Xbox Live is a huge success, the Playstation Network is getting better. You know what XBL excels at and the PSN is getting better with? Yup, voice chat. When you are playing online with someone, you want to be able to communicate. You need to be able to talk trash, to let your opponent know how bad you are owning them. Why would you want to do that? Because it’s the purpose of playing online. If not, I could just play against the computer. Which, without voice chat, you basically are doing online with the Wii. You’re playing against a computer with better or worse AI, depending on the skill of your opponent. This is unacceptable. I do not want to play against Hal 9000.

So, how should Nintendo do work and get this problem sorted? First and foremost, develop a headset peripheral. Something other than the Wii Speak microphone is needed. I’ve yet to use the Wii Speak microphone so I can’t speak to it’s quality but, it’s not good enough. You wanna know why I’ve never used it? Because it only works with Animal Crossing: City Folk. I do not see the logic here, create the product but only have it accessible for one game that targets a niche audience. Yes, there is a Wii Speak channel where you can make rooms and chat with Wii Friends, but we went into the difficulty of the “friend” system last week. If Nintendo developed a headset, and made voice chat more accessible, more games would utilize the feature. Worst case could be, they kept the microphone while enabling it with more games. I mean, I got my father in-law Tiger Woods ‘09 for Christmas, it would be so much easier to play online with him if I could talk him through it. As it stands now, that is an impossibility. Nintendo took a giant step creating Wii Speak and its channel, they still need to do work and make the feature widely available. If they could improve online play in every aspect, the Wii would put an even bigger dent in the wallets of its rivals.

Check out the source of this item Do Work Fridays Episode 3!