Japanese Sales Charts, Week Ending March 5

The launch of the DS Lite in Japan has proven to have unexpectedly little effect on the weekly hardware and software charts, with hardware sales showing just how few units Nintendo was able to get to market. In scenes reminiscent of the Xbox 360 launch in North America, only 68,438 DS Lite consoles were sold in the first four days, with many stores reporting either instant sell-outs or little to no stock in the first place. Nintendo had previously promised 450,000 DS Lite for the whole of March, a figure that was itself seen as considerably below demand. All eyes will now be on the March 11th launch of the additional two DS Lite colors, as Nintendo enters its tenth consecutive week of continued hardware stock problems in Japan. Taking advantage of the Nintendo DS stock issues, Bandai’s latest Mobile Suit Gundam game was able to take the number one spot in software sales, with 157,036 units sold. Square Enix’s new Seiken Densetsu title, and the first of the new “World of Mana” series, subsequently had a disappointing debut with just 102,555 sales – below initial expectations. Koei’s Samurai Warriors sequel performed well on its second week though, falling only two places and registering 97,646 unit sales. PSP port Valkyrie Profile provided better news for Square Enix with 70,084 sales, while Atlus’ new Devil Summoner game also performed relatively well with 63,833 units sold. Overall, the Nintendo DS accounted for 59 percent of all hardware sales this week, thanks to 49,118 unit sales of the original version of the console – out of a total of just 200,000 promised for the month by Nintendo. The PSP actually increased its sales by over 17,000 to 49,118, with the PlayStation 2 largely static at 25,778 units sold. The Game Boy Advance family of consoles accounted for 10,195 sales, while the GameCube recorded 1,489 sales and the Xbox 360 was again in last place with 1,240.

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