This Week In Japanese News: From Kinect Sales To Game Archives

[Gamasutra rounds up recent reports on the Japanese games industry from local news site Andriasang.com, a leading destination for English-language news on Japan's game industry.] In our latest round-up of Japanese game industry news not previously reported on Gamasutra, we look at Kinect's Japanese sales a year after its launch, no support for Game Archives when PS Vita launches, and more. Sony Confirms No Game Archives Support At PS Vita Launch Sony has disclosed that when PS Vita launches in Japan next month, the handheld will not feature support for Game Archives, that region's equivalent to PSone Classics, PS2 Classics, and TurboGrafx-16 titles currently available via PlayStation Network for PS3 and PSP systems. The company has not specified when it intends to eventually implement support for Game Archives with PS Vita, nor has it indicated whether the portable will be able to play those retro games when it launches in North America and Europe on February 22, 2012. Kinect in Japan: One Year Progress Report A year after Kinect's Japanese launch, local magazine Famitsu Xbox 360 has revealed surprisingly low hardware and software sales numbers for the motion-sensing device. In the last 12 months, retailers have sold only 114,000 Kinect units in the Japanese market. Famitsu offered this full month-by-month breakdown, according to a report from Japanese blog Sokuho@Hokanko:

The top selling Kinect compatible game is Kinect Adventures, which is bundled with the system and thus has 114,000 sales. Here's the full top 10:

As of June 2011, Microsoft's Xbox 360 console has sold 1.5 million units in Japan since debuting there in December 2005. PS3 Ni no Kuni Sold Only 40% Of Stock Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch moved just 40 percent of its retail stock in the game's first week of release in Japan (Namco Bandai will bring it to North America in early 2012), an indicator that it is not meeting developer and publisher Level-5's expectations. For comparison, last week's top-selling game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 for PS3, sold 180,000 units (and 30,000 on Xbox 360), or 75 percent its stock, which is usually as high as sell-through rates get before retailers start reporting that they've sold through their stock. Despite selling less than half of its shipment, Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch was still the third best-selling game, behind Modern Warfare 3 and Namco Bandai's Nintendo DS game One Piece: Gigant Battle 2, in the previous week with more than 67,000 copies purchased.