Japanese Sales Charts, Week Ending April 3rd

After last week’s raft of new releases the market seems to have stalled sharply with overall sales only 81 percent of the weekly average. The only significant seller was Namco’s Tekken 5 with 174,064 units sold. This is almost exactly the same figure achieved by Tekken 4 three years ago, when it sold approximately 173,000 units in its first week. This suggests that the latest, more favorably received, sequel should at least equal its forebear's lifetime total of approximately 299,000 units. The most interesting aspect of the charts is in terms of hardware, where the Nintendo DS has outsold the PSP for the second week running – following the release of newly colored versions of the console. Although it was actually the PlayStation 2 which emerged as the best selling console overall, with a 30.65 percent market share, the Nintendo DS was second with a 29.89 percent share and 43,023 units sold. This compares to just 33,911 units for the PSP and a 23.56 percent market share. According to Media Create’s latest figures 1,852,000 Nintendo DS have now been sold in Japan, compared to 1,068,000 PSP. Although the PSP launched slightly later than the DS and suffered considerable early stock problems many analysts expected it to quickly catch up with the DS and eventually overtake it. With sales as it is this is now unlikely to happen for at least six months, if at all. In terms of other hardware sales the Game Boy Advance sold 18,784 units for a 13.06 percent market share, followed by the GameCube with a 2.61 percent share and the Xbox at just 0.23 percent.

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