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PSP Go sells 28K units on Japanese launch day
While most of you probably spent your Sunday relaxing with a chilled beverage, watching some sporting event and relishing in the extra hour of life that had recently been bequeathed to you, the hard-working folks at Enterbrain were ... well, they were working hard. See, the PSP Go launched in Japan yesterday, and Enterbrain's sales statistics gatherers took it upon themselves to gather the sales data from the launch. Here's what they found: Sunday is a pretty terrible day to release a new handheld device. According to Enterbrain, retailers moved 28,275 units of the PSP Go system during its first day of availability. While that's still a fairly sizable amount of hardware, Japanese gaming blog Andriasang points out that the DSi, which went on sale on Saturday, November 1 (2008), moved 170,770 units during its first two days on the market. We guess that just goes to show, if you want your handhelds to launch with a bang, launch them on Saturday. Also, put two cameras in them. Sounds silly, we know, but it works.
RPG Maker DS: Make RPGs on the DS
The long-running RPG Maker series has appeared on PC, Super Famicom, PlayStation, and other home systems, but now Japanese game designers will be able to make portable RPGs. Using the RPG Maker DS software, players can create characters, environments, monsters, set sound effects and music, and even create special "event" items like chests and save points.All the screens show premade monster and character graphics being used -- from some 800 character pieces, 150 sounds, and 1500 map features, but you'll be able to make your own if you're patient enough (the stylus helps in that regard). There's also some kind of wireless support, though we don't know if it means you'll get to share your elaborate, strategic Twilight fanfic scenario online or not.RPG Maker DS will be out January 28. We're really hoping Agetec, who has published RPG Makers in North America, picks this one up for us. It's hard enough to play RPGs in Japanese, much less make them.
PS3 outsells Wii in Japan for September; thanks Slim!
What do we know about Japan? Even after those weird commercials, the PlayStation 3 has managed to outsell the Wii in Japan following the (what you might call) successful launch of the newly "encheapened" PS3 Slim. Japanese market research firm Enterbrain estimates that from August 31 through September 27 309,939 PS3s were sold; a new monthly record for the console. If you've been following our weekly Japanese Hardware Sales updates, this is no surprise to you. The usually dominant DSi and DS Lite combo sold a combined 297,060 units, which came alarmingly close to the Sony record, considering the 7,350 percent boost the PS3 saw post-Slim. It's notable that this Bloomberg report doesn't even list the Wii's monthly sales; however, with Nintendo's Wii at ¥20,000 (down from ¥25,000) starting this month, we imagine next month's chart will look a little different.
PSP Comics service gets support of all major Japanese publishers
ASCII Media Works, Bandai Visual, Enterbrain, Fujimi Shobo, Futabasha, Hakusensha, Kadokawa Group, Kodansha, Shogakukan, Shueisha and Square Enix -- these names may not be too familiar to those outside of Japan; but within Japan, they represent the entirety of the massive manga (comics) industry.Starting December, the Japanese PlayStation Store will be updated with new content from all of these publishers, with titles including Bleach, Evangelion, Detective Conan, Fullmetal Alchemist and more. A lineup like that would certainly entice many of us at Joystiq, but America will have to stick with downloadable Marvel comics for now.
Enterbrain's absurd prediction: Final Fantasy XIII will help sell PS3 in Japan
Don't mind the well-dressed Japanese gentleman in that tree. It's just Hirokazu Hamamura, president of Famitsu publisher Enterbrain, going out on a limb to predict that Final Fantasy XIII's arrival on December 17 in Japan will help sell a whole bunch of PS3s. He's talking 500,000 more of Sony's system sold during FFXIII's launch period alone. Crazy talk!Unless, that is, you consider the fact that Final Fantasy is a franchise that's popular enough in Japan (and around the world) to prompt the purchase of a console. Oh, and that there was this kind of significant "new PS3, hardware price cut" thing that just happened. Okay, so Hanamura isn't nuts ... he just makes a lot of sense. We like this guy! [Via Andriasang]
PS3 hits weekly sales record in Japan
According to Enterbrain's weekly sales data, Japanese consumers purchased 152,530 PlayStation 3 units last week, which represents a 7,350 percent increase from about 2,000 units the previous week. This is the highest number of PS3 systems sold in a single week in Japan, ever. Its launch week (which was, admittedly, two days long) garnered totals of 88,000 units.We can't imagine what happened last week to spur such sudden interest. Oh, right -- Play Face. The inspiring Play Face ad campaign is the only reasonable explanation for this sales boost.[Via Andriasang]
Monster Hunter 3 is Japan's best-selling third-party Wii game
Sinobi posted a list of the top ten third-party games on the Wii in Japan in terms of sales. At the top of the list, based on Enterbrain sales numbers acquired early by Sinobi, sits Capcom's Monster Hunter 3, with 720,000 copies sold.Despite the best-seller status, we doubt Capcom is pleased with these sales numbers. The publisher famously shipped one million copies of the game, which have yet to sell through. While sales of the hardware bundle have been good, the standalone version of the game sold only 40% of its stock in the first week, and is already being dropped in price in some stores by over half.[Via Andriasang]
Dragon Quest IX sells 2.3 million copies in two days
Japanese consumers eagerly grabbed up copies of Square Enix's Dragon Quest IX over the weekend, putting to rest any concern that the move to a handheld system would bother fans in the least. Enterbrain reports that the game sold 2,343,440 copies in its first week -- its "first week" actually being two days. Media Create reports a similar total of 2,318,932 copies. This beats the first-week record set by ... Dragon Quest VIII, of course! Media Create reports a sell-through rate of 81.56%, suggesting (according to Andriasang) that it probably sold out in some locations. There's something very comforting about reading stories of massive Dragon Quest sales in Japan. It's a reminder that some things in the gaming world are just like we remember them, even after decades. After the break, you can watch the game's intro movie as you begin the long wait for localization. [Image via GAME Watch, video via Gemaga]
PlayStation 3 overtakes Wii in Japan, now about twice in a blue moon
With all the doom and gloom stories we've seen about PlayStation 3 getting beat by Nintendo Wii, it's refreshing to have some good news for a change. For the first time in 16 months, Sony's console managed to best its motion-controlled competitor, 146,948 to 99,335 this past March in Japan, according to gaming research group / Famitsu publisher Enterbrain. The sales are undoubtedly helped by PS3 heavy-hitters Yakuza 3 and Resident Evil 5 debuting last month, and at this point we don't expect the trend to continue, but for now Sony, enjoy your victory and bask in the knowledge that you're still totally kicking Xbox 360's rear in your home country.
Japanese gaming industry sales decreased in 2008
According to research conducted by Famitsu publisher Enterbrain, the Japanese gaming industry's year-to-year sales dropped in 2008. Total industry revenue reached ¥552.42 billion last year -- an 18 percent decrease from ¥676.95 billion in sales during 2007. Hardware sales dropped 27 percent from the previous year to ¥231.52 billion, while software sales only fell 11 percent, ending up at ¥320.91 billion.Flamewar-fueling financial figures were also revealed in Enterbrain's study -- the DS reigned supreme in 2008, with 3,983,205 units sold. In addition, Pokémon Platinum was the year's highest grossing game, with 2,372,336 copies purchased. Second place went to the PSP with 3,230,563 units sold. Trailing behind, the Wii moved 2,257,575 consoles, the PS3 sold 999,903 units, and the Xbox 360 ended with a total of 398,633 consoles sold -- effectively doubling Microsoft's Japanese hardware sales figures from 2007.What's with the slowdown, Japan? Did you guys collectively take up knitting or something? Don't get us wrong, knitting is awesome, but letting it interfere with your ludological purchasing habits is just plain irresponsible.[Via Kotaku]
Top 5 selling games in 2008 across global markets
NPD, GfK Chart-Track and Enterbrain have combined video game software sales lists for the respective regions they cover to declare Mario Kart Wii as the top selling game of 2008. Games sales across the "world's three largest games markets" saw an 11% increase, totaling 409.9 million units last year.Top five selling games for US, UK and Japan combined: Mario Kart Wii - 8.94 million Wii Fit - 8.31 million Grand Theft Auto IV - 7.29 million Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 6.32 million Call of Duty: World at War - 5.89 million The rankings are almost identical to Edge's "guesstimate" sales list released last week, which included all of Europe, but not Japan. Overall, the US and UK markets saw increases of 15% and 26%, respectively. The Japanese market saw a 13% decline in software sales, which Enterbrain explains has little to do with the current generation of consoles, but is due to the 46% software sales drop on the PS2. Check out the chart after the break for a regional dissection of the software ranks.
Wii's winners and losers in Japan
We can't exactly trust the validity of the numbers used to create this list of best-selling games across the three home platforms, since it's just some guy on Geocities doing it (and he claims that he might alter numbers to deter copying) but they're close enough to our expectations for most games. These numbers are purportedly derived from Enterbrain and Famitsu sales data. Kotaku reproduced the top and bottom-selling games on each platform, and we think that's a nice way to organize it.The top ten Wii games are not too surprising, including stuff like Wii Sports, Wii Play, Wii Fit, Brawl, and other big Nintendo franchises. The only third-party game on the list is Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, which, of course, is a Mario game!But the bottom ten is a lot more entertaining, revealing, for example, that poor Opoona sold only 5,000 copies, as did Dewy's Adventure. D3's motivation for putting their Simple games on WiiWare is made clear by the fact that their disc-based releases totally bombed. Though not as badly as Hudson's Puzzle Series Vol. 1 Sudoku, which apparently sold 482 copies total.It's hard to pick interesting tidbits out of the middle of the list (which we won't reproduce after the break in the interest of brevity) but apparently No More Heroes sold just 27,873 copies -- much less than the 84,224 copies of Mysterious Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer 3 that went out!
Enterbrain: DSi exceeds one million sales
It was just this month that Enterbrain reported that the DSi had sold over 500,000 units. Now, according to the publisher, Nintendo has almost doubled that feat before the month has even ended. Their weirdly specific estimate puts the DSi at 1,062,416 units sold since the device's launch at the beginning of November.The DSi is proving to be a worthy addition to the DS lineup for Nintendo, then. Those million sales contributed to a total of 24,859,874 DS systems sold in Japan since the launch of the original DS back in 2004.%Gallery-33263%
DSi gives Nintendo 535,379 reasons to smile
The Nintendo DSi has completed its first full month on Japanese stores shelves, and guess what? It sold a lot! No, really! Enterbrain says 535,379 units were snapped up during November -- a figure that only just failed to match the Lite's opening month of around 550,000 sales. Nintendo probably isn't too devastated by that.Furthermore, DSi sales have boosted the DS platform's total sales to 24,239,590 units in Japan. In a country of 127.4m, some form of the DS will soon be owned by one in five people (okay, so some will have purchased more than one DS model, but let's not nitpick)! Anyway, as we're writing about the DSi being ridiculously popular again, now feels like a good time to examine the latest import costs: YesAsia.com: $299.99 (free shipping) Play-Asia.com: $249.00 Model-Gadget.com: $208.67 Gadget-Asia.com: $223.58 (free shipping) Renchi.com: $249.00 NCSX.com: $249.00 %Gallery-36348%
Wii hardware Animal Crosses the 7 million mark in Japan
Enterbrain reports that the Wii system has, as of November 23, sold 7,000,000 units in Japan. To compare, the GameCube has sold 4 million in its home country (according to Wikipedia), and the DS has sold -- oh wait, that one doesn't make the Wii sales sound as good.Helping to drive the Wii sales last week was Animal Crossing: City Folk, of which an astonishing 303,204 copies flew off of Japanese store shelves in its debut week. If we were feeling snarky about Animal Crossing, we'd say that between that and Chrono Trigger, it was a good week for ports. But that's mean.%Gallery-27704%
Wii Music shifts 50k on day one in Japan
Don't they look happy? That's because they all bought Wii Music, along with 49,996 others. Yup, you read that right: the Wii Music day one sales data from Japan is in, and according to Famitsu publisher Enterbrain, the magical figure is 50,000 units sold. How does that compare to the Japanese launches of other large first-party Wii games? Not that well, as it happens; hit the break to see for yourself.%Gallery-27713%
PSP is number 1 in Japan the first half of 2008
During the past few weeks the PSP's sales have been less than ideal, but Sony's portable is still on top in Japan for 2008 ... so far. According the Enterbrain, the PSP has sold 1,583,731 units the first half of the year in the land of the rising sun. The PSP's main competitor, Nintendo's DS, sold 1,314,919 units during that same period. Nintendo's portable is still way ahead of the PSP in terms of lifetime sales though -- 23,484,680 units of the DS were sold versus the PSP's 10,157,757 units sold.In the software arena, Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G is in second place with 1,602,386 copies sold. It was beaten by yet another Nintendo product, Mario Kart Wii, which sold 1,744,387 copies.With the PSP Brite launching in about two weeks and DSi launching in a month, the two handhelds' struggle for dominance in Japan will truly begin. Now we gotta ask: who are you rooting for?
Infinite Undiscovery, price cut help Xbox 360 outsell Wii in Japan
It wasn't so frightening when the Xbox 360 outsold the PS3 for a week back when Tales of Vesperia came out, but now that it's sold more than the Wii during the week ending Sept. 14 ... well, now we're stricken with panic. According to Enterbrain, the Xbox 360 sold 28,861 units during the week, while the Wii sold 27,057 (the PS3 managed 8,050).Xbox 360 sales were more than likely spurred by the one-two punch of a Japanese price cut and the release of console-exclusive Infinite Undiscovery, which sold 86,708 units in its first week. MCV points out that the 360 has now sold 717,275 units in Japan -- the very foundations of our world would be shaken if it actually went on to sell a million units.%Gallery-23402%
NPD, Chart-Track and Enterbrain combine forces for global sales report
NPD, Chart-Track and Enterbrain have announced the joint monthly Top Global Markets Report, an account integrating the point-of-sale data from the US, UK and Japan. We don't know what information will be released publicly from the report on a monthly basis yet, but for the clients of these groups it will provide global data from the leading markets.After the break we've placed a small taste of what the report has to offer, with a chart showing the top five selling games year-to-date across the tracked countries. We're also following up with NPD regarding what impact this new report will have on the standard monthly US report and what information from the global report will be made public. We'll update as soon as we hear back.Update: A NPD representative tells us: "The monthly report from NPD US will still be a standard deliverable. We're not sure if a regular media deliverable based on this new tracking product is something we're going to be providing. It all depends on partner reactions, client acceptance and things like that." Translation: Monthly NPD data goes on as normal, a public version of the combined global data is still up in the air.
Reuters: PlayStation 3 catching up to Wii in Japan; Us: not really
While elsewhere in the world, the Wii has little trouble outpacing its competition – with nearly 25 million units sold worldwide, nearly double the PS3's 13 million and a solid 25% lead on the Xbox 360's 20 million in sales – in Japan, it's a two console race (sorry, Xbox). In a piece headlined "Sony PS3 catching up to Wii in Japanese sales," Reuters' Tokyo branch covers the horse race, writing that the Wii "once again outsold Sony Corp's PlayStation 3 in Japan in June, but its lead is fading." While technically accurate if referring to monthly sales – the Wii only outsold the PS3 by a margin of 1.7 to 1 last month, a dip from the 6 to 1 margin of the previous month – the bigger picture isn't so clear. So, spurred on by sales of Metal Gear Solid 4, the PS3 did better last month, okay (you already know that, of course, from reading our Japanese hardware sales series). But with nearly 6 million Wii units sold in Japan, versus just 2 million PlayStation 3 units sold (source: Wii, PS3), it looks to us like the PlayStation 3 still has a lot of "catching up" to do and no more Metal Gear Solids.
