Jacob Mazel

Summary:

With the releases of Chrono Trigger, Mobile Suit Gundam: Gundam vs. Gundam, Animal Crossing: City Folk, and Last Remnant for DS, PSP, Wii, and Xbox 360 respectively Japan is in line for its biggest software week in months. All four titles sold over 100,000 units in their debut week, and the first three games opened to sales of over 250,000. The first full week of August was the last time four games topped 100,000 units in the preliminary data (the games were Rhythm Heaven Gold, Fire Emblem DS, Phantasy Star Portable and Tales of Vesperia). During that week, only Xbox 360 saw a major boost in hardware sales, but each of the top games released this week will accompany significant hardware sales boosts because of the season. Gundam and Last Remnant also have their own hardware bundles to help increase sales.

Key Points:

-     The top software in the preliminary data added up to over 1.3m units this week, a 5:2 increase over last week.

-      Animal Crossing: City Folk is the biggest Wii debut since April when Mario Kart Wii sold nearly 600,000 units at launch.

-     Consoles continue to sell less software than portables in Japan. With ten portable games and 10 consoles games in the preliminary data this week, about three portable games sold for every two console games.

Understanding the Japanese Preview:

Rather than saying x game for y platform sold between 20,000 and 28,000 units as in the past, the preliminary data will be broken down into charts by platform. Within these charts, there will two additional categories besides the rounded sales figure under ‘sales’. On the left will be ‘low end’ depicting the lowest amount the title likely sold for the week, while to the right will be ‘high end’ depicting the highest amount the title likely sold for the week. As always, this data is preliminary, and therefore, not final, but it is based on a sample. The varying platform market share the sample represents is why consistent sellers like Wii Fit do not always appear in the preliminary data. Sales for this report are for the week ending November 23, 2008.

Software by Platform Breakdown:

Wii Software – Animal Crossing: City Folk debuted as two skus, but no other Wii titles charted. In the final data, Mario Kart, Wii Fit, Wii Music, Wii Sports, Wii Play and recent third party games will probably see an Animal Crossing boost. City Folk sales were roughly 2:1 in favor of the cheaper, non-Wii Speak version. In total, the game sold over 320,000 units, just about 5% shy of the debut for the DS version. Of course the DS version managed to sell 400,000 in its fifth week of sales in 2005, and even today, three years later it still sells thousands of units per week. So the Wii version is unlikely to live up to the high sales of the DS version long term. Expect Wii hardware sales to rise this week into the 45,000 to 75,000 unit range.

PS3 Software – PS3 had two games chart in the preliminary data. Samurai Dou 3 (The Way of the Samurai 3) sold another 25,000 units this week. Grand Theft Auto IV sold another 10,000 units and now has a real shot of joining the exclusive club of third party console games on Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360 in Japan to top 200,000 units. Expect PS3 hardware sales to remain in the 17,000 to 23,000 unit range this week.

Xbox 360 Software – The Last Remnant debuted to sales of over 115,000 units this week (bundles appear to be included in this total), reaching about one in seven Xbox 360 users in Japan. Also debuting this week for the platform was Otomedius G at about 10% of the Last Remnant debut. This is the last major push of exclusive Xbox 360 software for a bit in Japan, so it should be interesting to watch how the HD-war shapes up with Winning Eleven, White Knight Story and Gundam Musou 2 likely to push PS3 quite a bit in the coming weeks. Expect Xbox 360 hardware sales to rise into the 15,000 to 35,000 unit range this week.

PS2 Software – PS2 had three games chart as four skus in the preliminary data. Dokapon Kingdom was the top PS2 game for the week, with 27,000 units sold across two versions according to the preliminary data. The Shield of AIGIS and a new Hitman Reborn game debuted as well. Fate/Unlimited is the last foreseeable big software title for PS2 in Japan which continues to slowly wind down after almost nine full years on the Japanese market. Expect PS2 hardware sales to remain in the 4,000 to 8,000 unit range this week.

PSP Software – Mobile Suit Gundam: Gundam vs. Gundam was the big debut on PSP this week, with sales of almost 270,000 units (bundles do not appear to be included in this total). Prinny and a new Ratchet & Clank also debuted to sales of 23,000 units and 10,000 units respectively. Monster Hunter Portable 2G (the cheap edition) saw a boost this week which is a good indication that both PSP hardware sales and software sales outside the preliminary data will be up from last week in the final data. Expect PSP hardware sales to rise into the 55,000 to 95,000 unit range this week.

DS Software – Chrono Trigger was the top DS game this week in a huge upset (not). The game sold 265,000 units in its debut. Sega’s new Saka Tsuku game also debuted strongly, topping 80,000 units. Kirby Superstar Ultra came in at just below 80,000 units. The three other DS games to chart sold between 20,000 and 30,000 units each. DS has seen most of its big releases for the Japanese holiday season now, although the new Professor Layton isn’t out yet. With the PSP boost this week it should be interesting to see how the machines hold up against one another over the coming weeks. Expect DS hardware sales to rise into the 95,000 to 115,000 unit range this week.

Contact Vgchartz at jmazel@vgchartz.com