14 DAY TRIAL // Hardware sales have been registering a small increase on the Japanese market, while videogame sales are quickly rebounding to levels not seen since Christmas with the launch of various new titles building on already established franchises.
The Nintendo DS handheld is still the best sold gaming console, registering an increase of over 5,000 units in sales to reach the figure of 70,760. The percentage of the DS Lite consoles sold is decreasing versus the newer DSi model. The PlayStation Portable has only a game at number one in the videogame chart, but it has increased its sales by 1,500 to 44,135.
The best sold home console is the Nintendo Wii, which dropped 3,500 to go to 23,278, even as the boss of Nintendo commented that Japanese players were more interested in gaming on the go than in having a console installed in their home. Meanwhile, the PlayStation 3 continues to outsell the Microsoft made Xbox 360, with sales of 17,405 to 8,107. The PlayStation 2 is still alive, selling 5,334 units.
Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2 from Namco Bandai is the best sold game of the week. It has a cast of characters taken from most of the previous games in the Tales series and the PlayStation Portable title has managed to move more than 213,000 units in its debut week. Another PSP game, Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 from Konami, sits at number 2 in the charts, with 109,000 copies sold in one week. Konami must be celebrating, as the PlayStation 2 version of the same game is in third spot, with just one thousand sold games separating the two.
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles - Echoes of Time from Square Enix also launched well, with 102,000 units sold in one week on the Nintendo DS. The Wii version of the game only sold 22,000 units.