Japanese Sales Charts, Week Ending November 14th

Software sales in Japan have continued their achingly slow recovery, with an 8 percent increase on last week, although this is still only 77 percent of the weekly average. The increase has primarily been led by Square Enix’s new portable Kingdom Hearts title for Game Boy Advance, with 203,000 sales (this compares to 465,000 first week sales for the original PlayStation 2 version). In second place on the charts with 121,000 sold, Magna Carta is a Korean role-playing title, converted from the PC and adapted for the Japanese market and the PlayStation 2. It's one of the first Korean-created titles to find success in Japan, and many expect it to be the first of many such titles. Although its sales were 37,000 copies, back in third place, Microsoft will nevertheless be cheered at the relative success of Halo 2, which flies in the face of many Japanese media reports about the public’s apathy towards the title and format. Unfortunately for Microsoft, the relative success of Halo 2, alongside Dead or Alive Ultimate last week, it has not translated into a significant boost for the Xbox user base in Japan. The format’s market share has fallen from last week’s all time high of 3.24 percent, to just 1.01 percent – although this is still around twice the normal amount. Following in the wake of the new-look console design, the PlayStation 2 is still by far the most popular format this week, with a 56.90 percent market share, followed by the Game Boy Advance at 37.88 percent and the GameCube at 4.09 percent.

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