Japanese Market Shrinks 6.9% In 2009, DS and DQIX Lead

The Japanese game retail market continued to shrink in 2009, with overall sales down 6.9 percent year over year to ¥542,640 million ($5.9 billion), according to new data from Famitsu publisher Enterbrain. It's a less drastic gap than last year's 17.4 percent fall, however. As in 2008, it was hardware sales that saw the bigger year-over-year decline; Enterbrain's figures, as translated by Andriasang, put the drop at 13.6 percent to ¥216,490 million ($2.4 billion). In terms of units, Nintendo DS led the hardware charts, outselling the PSP nearly two to one -- although its unit sales combine all models of the handheld, from original to Lite, DSi and DSi LL. Nintendo DS: 4,025,313 (29,160,589) PSP: 2,307,971 (13,386,455) Wii: 1,975,178 (9,501,999) PlayStation 3: 1,727,041 (4,391,407) Xbox 360: 331,706 (1,197,873) Software fell 1.8 percent to ¥326,160 million ($3.6 billion). The top-seller was Square Enix's Dragon Quest IX: 1. Dragon Quest IX (Square Enix, DS): 4,100,968 2. Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver (Pokemon, DS): 3,382,597 3. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Nintendo, Wii): 2,485,150 4. Friend Collection (Nintendo, DS): 2,311,948 5. Final Fantasy XIII (Square Enix, PS3): 1,698,256 Dengeki Magazine parent ASCII Media Works recently released its own figures showing a retail market decline, although ASCII placed the year-over-year drop at 16 percent for hardware and 4 percent for software.