14 DAY TRIAL // It's truly amazing to see the impact that one successful videogame release can have on the industry as a whole. The Japanese videogaming market has been pretty much stagnated this year, with sales below 2008 levels in both the hardware and the software categories. The summer release of the Square Enix developed and published Dragon Quest IX for the Nintendo DS has changed the entire landscape.
On the hardware front, the Nintendo DSi, the newest hardware revision of the very popular handheld, has sold close to 100,000 units, which is a significant increase that can be wholly attributed to the new game. This is clear when looking at the sales numbers posted by the PlayStation Portable from Sony, which only managed to move a little over 24,000 units in one week.
But that was good enough to beat the Nintendo Wii, which is still the best selling home gaming console. It has sold a couple of hundred devices over 20,000, double the number of its closest two competitors, the PlayStation 3 from Sony and the Xbox 360 from Microsoft.
When it comes to the videogame chart, Dragon Quest IX is dominating other releases. The title has managed to sell more than 612,000 copies in one week, which means that close to 3 million units of the game have been bought by gamers. If the trend continues, it might dominate the chart well into the fall.
Pro Yakyuu Spirits 6 from Konami for the PlayStation 3 is in the second spot when it comes to sales, with 73,773 copies moved only marginally, edging out Wii Sports Resort, created by Nintendo for the Wii, which sold 72,291 copies, probably mainly because of the bundle offer, which gets the player the Wii Motion Plus add on. Tomodachi Collection is in fourth spot, while the PlayStation 2 version of Pro Yakyuu Spirits 6 is in fifth spot.