11th September 2005, 11:50 AM
Quote:Courtesy of Media-Create, we have the most recent sales figures from Japan.
Overall sales for the period saw a huge dropoff from previous weeks, likely due to the annual end of summer shift and a dearth of compelling new software offerings. In fact, the only new title to make it into the top 10 was the latest Bleach (anime) game for the PSP. Nintendo continued to be held up in the charts on the strength of their handhelds, with their brain-centric "non-games" again exhibiting impressive staying power. Word of mouth must really be fueling the success of these simple and intuitive titles, each of which is steadily approaching the 500k mark in total units sold. As if it hasn't been said before, these "games" are quite the phenomenon. It will be fascinating to observe their popularity once the localized versions hit the western markets.
Also maintaining their chart residence was Jump Super Stars and Sega's hit Mushiking. It should be noted that Sega has recently announced that they are hard at work on a DS version of the beetle-battler, with a target release date in December. Wonder if it will utilize Nintendo WiFi Connection? Nothing is for sure yet, but you can bet it will only serve to reinforce the obviously monstrous following the series has garnered. As for whether the series will make it out of Japan, it should be noted that toy maker Hasbro intends to release the original collectible card-based form of the game in the U.S. If the experiment proves successful, the west may very well see the genesis of their own Mushiking craze. Now back to the numbers:
No. System Title Publisher
1 PS2 Tales of Legendia 51,676 Namco
2 DS Brain Training 33,745 Nintendo
3 DS Gentle Brain Exercises 31,445 Nintendo
4 PS2 Mobile Suit Gundam SEED DESTINY: Generation of C.E. 27,598 Bandai
5 PSP BLEACH: Heat the Soul 2 14,546 SCE
6 DS JUMP Super Stars 21,826 Nintendo
7 PS2 World Soccer Winning Eleven 9 20,821 Konami
8 PS2 NARUTO: Uzumaki Ninden 17,381 Bandai
9 GBA The King of Beetle Mushiking: Greatest Champion 12,562 Sega
10 PS2 Winning Post 7 10,731 Koei
On the hardware side... well, in recent months the DS hasn't needed any significant new releases to sell a healthy amount. Nothing has changed as sales actually increased a bit from last week despite no significant new software. Here is hoping that many of these new DS owners are buying up quality recent releases like Konami's Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow and Lost in Blue... but more likely they are purchasing Brain Training for Adults. New customers and new markets indeed.
Meanwhile, the GBA Micro is just about to land...Here are the figures for this week:
No. Console Week Sales Last Week Sales Year Sales
1 Nintendo DS 58,579 57,313 1,578,877
2 PlayStation 2 26,282 27,161 1,376,124
3 PlayStation Portable 22,610 20,322 1,193,086
4 Game Boy Advance SP 11,081 11,144 505,561
5 GameCube 2,388 2,586 153,319
6 Game Boy Advance 538 652 18,520
7 Xbox 198 130 10,175
Conclusive evidence that indeed two screens ARE better than one!
Sometimes you get the scorpion.