Japanese Sales Charts, Week Ending May 8th

Sales have continued to disappoint in the second half of the Japanese Golden Week – a week-long period of public holidays that has traditionally seen brisk sales in previous years. Sales were down 4 percent on last week and just 71 percent of the week average, with no new titles in the top ten. Golden Week sales are usually dominated by older, mass market releases so the lack of new releases is not exceptional. However, number one title Romancing SaGa sold only 66,840 units – low by any standard for a number one title. The popular role-playing game has suffered from stock problems, having first been released two weeks ago, and its overall performance is likely to have pleased publishers Square Enix. Nintendo DS title Nintendogs has continued to perform well, with consolidated sales for the game (which is split into three functionally identical titles, each containing different breeds of dog) totaling 66,840 this week. The success of Nintendogs and Naruto has once again seen the Nintendo DS dominate hardware sales, with 67,863 units sold for a market share of 40.07 percent. The PlayStation 2 was in second place with 38,629 sales and a 22.81 percent market share. Sales of the PSP were down almost 5,000 on last week with 33,981 sales and a 20.06 percent market share. Such a relatively weak performance during Golden Week will be somewhat disappointing for Sony in Japan, especially as for the second week running there are no PSP titles in the top ten. Sales of the Game Boy Advance were put at 23,064 for the week, for a 13.61 percent market share, followed by the GameCube at 3.34 percent and the Xbox at 0.10 percent.

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