Japanese Sales Charts, Week Ending August 14th

The newly released DS title Jump Super Stars and the new red colored Nintendo DS console has given Nintendo executives much cause for celebration in this week's Japan charts, with DS hardware sales totaling an impressive 103,095 units. This added to an otherwise promising week for software releases, with overall sales down 32 percent on last week, but still 32 percent above the weekly average. Topping the software charts, the much-heralded Jump Super Stars for Nintendo DS sold 220,912 units in its first week. The game features a huge range of anime characters licensed from Japanese manga Shonen Jump, including the likes of Dragon Ball Z, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Naruto, One Piece, Shaman King and Yu Yu Hakusho, which has guaranteed it a high profile amongst games players and the wider Japanese public. (The game is unlikely to get a Western release, though, since most of the individual franchises are licensed by a wide range of different companies outside of Japan.) The combined advertising surrounding Jump Super Stars and the red colored Nintendo DS has also seen the two DS brain training games vault back up the charts, displaying a near-unparalleled amount of longevity for games in the Japanese charts. Other releases of interest in the top ten include Medal of Honor: European Assault, which after the similar success of Rising Sun confirms the series as easily the most successful first person shoot ‘em-up in Japan, with a not unimpressive 33,361 unit sales. This week also sees the first PSP game in the top ten for some time, with a new Mobile Suit Gundam title from Bandai. The 28,460 unit sales were not particularly impressive, although the game has been on sale for three days less than other titles in the chart. In hardware sales, the Nintendo DS took a massive 54.29 percent chunk of the market, followed by the PlayStation 2 at 19.51 percent with 37,041 unit sales and the PSP at 13.22 percent and 25,100 unit sales (actually the console’s best performance for several months). The Game Boy Advance was next with a 10.88 percent market share, followed by the GameCube at 2.00 percent and the Xbox at 0.11 percent.

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