Japanese Sales Charts, Week Ending May 15th

With the end of the Golden Week festive period in Japan, console sales have decreased further, in a disappointing period of sales for the Japanese industry. Sales of the top 100 titles were down 50 percent on the previous week and only 36 percent of the weekly average – the worst performance for three and a half years. In fact, 445,841 units were sold at the same time last year, compared to only around 290,000 units this year. Sales traditionally slump following Golden Week but this year seems to have suffered particuarly badly thanks to a lack of new titles – with many prominent games having been released earlier in the year than is usual. As the top rated game, Front Mission Online sold only a disappointing 27,053 units, with the tenth ranked Derby Time clocking up just 5,904 units. Hardware sales were also dramatically down, with the PlayStation 2 just ahead with 27,503 sales for a 30.27 percent market share. Next was the Nintendo DS at 29.26 percent, the PSP at 28.00 percent, the Game Boy Advance at 9.54 percent, the GameCube at 2.70 percent and the Xbox at 0.24 percent.

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