It looks like the new revamped PSP (PlayStation Portable), dubbed Slim & Lite PSP, is a huge success in Japan: just a few days after it was launched on Sept 20, Sony's sales surged past competitors to claim the top spot among handheld units in Japan. Specifically, it managed to sell more than the Nintendo DS, its main competitor, in the Japanese market. Sales were also boosted by the launch of the Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII game for this device.

Meanwhile, Nintendo DS dropped under 100,000 units sold a week to around 79k, an almost all-time-low. However, its big brother the Nintendo Wii still rules the home console market by a large margin. In fact, Nintendo Wii sales where double than that of its closest competitor sales-wise, the Sony Playstation 2. Microsoft managed to sell only 1/10 of the figures reported for the Wii. All things being equal, one still has to remember that the Nintendo DS still has a 13 million sales lead on the PSP and the Wii has a lead of over 2 million on the PS3.

In Japan, last week's console sales, according to Media Create, were as follows:

95,487 Sony PSP
79,974 Nintendo DS
26,181 Nintendo Wii
13,128 PlayStation 2
13,101 PlayStation 3
1,243  Xbox 360
(units)

Also, in the UK, the Slim & Lite PSP sold 17,000 units in its first week available.

The new PSP is a sleeker and more streamlined version of the popular portable gaming console, 33 percent lighter and 19 percent slimmer than the current version, making the all-in-one mobile entertainment system even more convenient to carry around at less than 1/2-pound in weight and less than 3/4-inch in thickness. It includes a new feature, the possibility of linking your PSP through an AV video out cable to a Bravia LCD for viewing the content stored on the MemoryStick in widescreen or playing your games.

The device's RAM has been doubled to 64MB, which should make games load faster, as proved in fact by HTLounge. They have found out that in Final Fantasy Crisis Core, the new PSP Slim seems to load the next stage almost instantly, whereas the aging non-slim PSP took a solid 7 or 8 seconds. Other than that it’s the same 1200mAh battery announced during E3, but which has the same overall runtime as the actual 1800mAh battery. However, original PSP remotes will not work with the new PSP.