After Golden Week, PS Vita's sales hit another record low in Japan

Following Japan's Golden Week of holidays, game hardware and software sales have plunged in the country, and system sales for the struggling PS Vita have hit a new record low. Since it's launch last December, PS Vita has had difficulty building any upward momentum in Japan. The portable has suffered a drought of compelling software and declining hardware sales -- last week, the system sold only 6,340 units. Compared to other handheld systems, that's almost half of PSP's 12,247 units and a seventh of 3DS's 46,425 system sales (down from 91,868). Not a single PS Vita title managed to crack Japan's top 20 software sales chart last week, meaning no PS Vita game sold more than 2,819 copies at retail in the country. "For a game platform, like Vita, the software is the key to success -- how good the software is, that is the key to business success," said Sony CEO Kaz Hirai last week. "We have to reinforce the software area in order to improve the business, that is the basic line." Plenty of 3DS and PSP games appeared in the chart, but compared to Golden Week's inflated sales, all games sold around half as much if not less than they did during that holiday period -- with the exception of Sony's Starhawk for PlayStation 3. LightBox Interactive and SCE Santa Monica Studio's Starhawk was the only new game to appear in the top 20 last week, and it took the #4 spot after moving 12,873 copies. It was behind Mario Party 9 for Wii, Fire Emblem: Awakening for 3DS, and Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City for PS3. Months-old 3DS software appears to have a stranglehold on Japan's software sales, with games like Super Mario 3D Land, Monster Hunter 3G, Mario Kart 7, Kid Icarus: Uprising, and Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games choking the top ten chart. Full software and hardware sales charts for the May 7 to 13 period in Japan, provided by Media Create and translated on the NeoGAF forums, are available here.