Japanese Sales Charts, Week Ending December 12th

The launch of the PlayStation Portable (PSP) in Japan has had markedly little effect on the Japanese software sales chart, with only two titles in the top ten. This is, most likely, due to the low availability of the console itself, with only 200,000 units being available at launch. Of these, 160,019 were sold – 85 percent of the total allocation, compared to 89 percent of the 500,000 Nintendo DS consoles available at launch. However, if reserved consoles are counted, the PSP can be considered to have completely sold out. Despite all this, it is worth nothing that Dragon Quest VIII has now remained at number one through two separate hardware launches. 203,618 units of the game (to be known as Dragon Warrior VIII in the West) were sold this week, making for a lifetime total of around 2,846,900 so far. Dragon Quest VII sold a total of 3,834,000 units in its lifetime. The next highest ranking title, Pachinko Slot Simulator Yoshimune, sold 188,927 this week, followed by 183,583 units for Gundam vs. ZGundam. Minna no Golf Portable (aka Hot Shots Golf Portable) was the highest ranked PSP title with 65,900 units sold, with Ridge Racers selling 60,624 units. The next highest-ranking PSP title was Armored Core: Formula Front, a long way down at number twenty-eight. In terms of hardware sales, the Nintendo DS is still out in front with a 37.32 percent market share (198,892 units), followed by the PSP at 30.03 percent, the PlayStation 2 at 18.45 percent, the Game Boy Advance at 9.35 percent (its lowest ever market share percentage), the GameCube at 4.76 percent and the Xbox at just 0.07 percent (385 units).