Japanese Sales Charts, Week Ending October 17th

The Japanese games market has continued its uneven course through the year, with a week of sales that is only 52.37% of the weekly average and down almost by a half on last week. This is largely due to the lack of new releases, with even number one, the tilt-sensor GBA title Mawaru Made in Wario (the sequel to what is known in the West as Wario Ware, Inc.: Mega MicroGame$) selling only around 86,000 units – less than the 100,000 usually expected of any Japanese number one. As occasionally happens, Western releases are starting to infiltrate the Japanese charts to fill in for the absence of new home grown titles, although Electronic Art’s Burnout 3 sold only around 32,000 units. These results are by no means disastrous for the Japanese market in general, though, as October is traditionally a relatively quiet time of year for sales. In terms of hardware, little has changed, with the Game Boy Advance still well ahead, sporting a 56.98 percent market share, followed by the PlayStation 2 at 35.65 percent, the GameCube at 6.93 percent and the Xbox at 0.27 percent. Once again, though, these figures are influenced not only by the strong performance of recent Game Boy Advance titles, such as Pokémon Emerald and Made in Wario, but also the limited availability of the PlayStation 2 console – in advance of the release of the newly designed version of the hardware.

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