Latest Japanese Sales Charts - Week Ending May 23

The Japanese market has performed well this week, at a normally quiet time of year, with a slew of unusual titles that have cleverly taken advantage of the lack of other big releases. Most surprising of these is the release of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City which has gone straight in at number one, following in the footsteps of the similarly impressive performance of Grand Theft Auto III last year. Sales are still low for a Japanese number one title, but this success is certainly important in suggesting that Japanese consumers are becoming more and more open to Western titles. The other big success story of the week is the Famicom Mini series (known in the west as the Classic NES series) of cut-price conversions of famous NES/Famicom games for the Game Boy Advance. Nintendo has now shipped a total of 1.5 million copies of the series in Japan, with the Famicom Mini version of Super Mario Bros. , which left the top ten this week for the first time since its release in February, having now sold more than 500,000 copies on its own. Approximately 168,000 Famicom Mini titles were sold this week, with the introduction of a second wave of titles. Of these Goemon, Dr Mario, Adventure Island and Wrecking Crew have proven the most popular. In hardware sales the Game Boy Advance has regained its lead over the PlayStation 2 with a 47.15% market share, compared to 44.69% for Sony’s console. The GameCube now seems stuck at the sub-ten percent mark at 7.37%, while the Xbox has outsold the PS one for the first time in three weeks at a still humiliating 0.35%.

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