Japanese Sales Charts, Week Ending December 18

Game software have increased once again in Japan, in what is generally the second busiest retail week of the year, with sales up 22 percent on last week, and 163 percent above the weekly average. This underlies a strong end to the year which looks set to continue into the next few weeks, with major releases such as Kingdom Hearts II and a new Nintendo DS Brain Training game yet to come. The number one title was the latest in Namco’s Tales of role-playing series, with Tales of the Abyss recording an impressive 404,667 unit sales. Aided by the time of year and the tenth anniversary of the series in Japan, this is notably better than the performance of Tales of Legendia in August which recorded around 242,000 sales in its first week, as well as January’s Tales of Rebirth, which had approximately 335,000 units sold in the first week. The rest of the chart, though, has been completely dominated by Nintendo format games, with no less than six first party titles from the publisher itself. Animal Crossing: Wild World recorded sales of above 100,000 for the third week running to come in at number two with 183,699 units sold, while Mario Kart DS also sold more than 100,000 in its second week with 145,666 units. Nintendo’s results in terms of hardware sales are even more extraordinary, with the Nintendo DS accounting for 65.89 percent of all hardware sold this week with a total of 408,770 units sold - only 60,000 less than achieved during the launch week. Considering the continuation of underwhelming performance of its game software, the PSP has also sold well, with 95,689 units sold for a 15.42 percent share of the market. The Xbox 360’s second week on the charts, though, has been even more disappointing than the first, with the console, showing 8,623 units sold, failing to outsell even the GameCube. This is a performance so far in Japan beneath even the low standards of the original Xbox’s launch - in large part thanks to the continued non-appearance of Dead or Alive 4 or any other prominent Japanese-developed titles. The PlayStation 2 was the third best selling console this week in Japan, with a 8.92 percent market share and 55,342 units sold. The Game Boy Advance family of consoles was next with a 5.48 percent overall share (Game Boy Advance SP: 19,098, Game Boy Micro: 14,432, Game Boy Advance: 416), followed by the GameCube at 2.88 percent and 17,849 units sold. Despite plenty of stock the Xbox 360, as mentioned, could manage only a 1.39 percent market share and 8,623 units sold, beating only the original Xbox on 0.03 percent and 182 units sold.

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