Nintendo Dominates Japanese Game Sales For 2010 Thus Far

A report from a Japanese retail game sales tracking blog shows Nintendo dominating Japan's software market in 2010 so far, selling more units than the next three biggest publishers in the country combined. Nintendo's nearly 12.9 million game sales this year are enough to cover the 4.6 million sold by Square Enix, 3.9 million sold by Namco Bandai and 3.1 million sold by Konami, with enough room left over to include smaller publishers like Hudson and Microsoft's Japanese sales. This data was extrapolated from Media Create Top 50 weekly game lists, and compiled by Japanese blog Oolong Tea [Japanese language link], and with highlights translated by 1UP.com. Other top performers for the year in the chart -- which did not track sales below the Top 50, so is likely undercounting most game publishers -- include Capcom with over 2.8 million sales, and Sega with just over 2.1 million. Professor Layton creator Level 5 is the last of seven top publishers to have sold over a million games in the country thus far this year. At 13th place, Take-Two Interactive is the highest-ranking American publisher on 2010's Japanese 2010 sales list, selling 278,000 units on strong sales for titles like Red Read Redemption. This puts the company slightly ahead of EA's 220,000 Japanese sales this year, but slightly behind Japanese publisher Spike, which is barely know in the West. Sales on handheld systems like the DS and PSP dominate the performance of many of Japan's twenty-four biggest publishers this year, while the PS3 and PS2 are the most significant consoles for most big publishers. Despite a healthy Japanese installed base for the Wii, most non-Nintendo companies on the list found only 10 percent or less of their sales from Nintendo's console. Hudson was a notable exception here, with 100,000 Wii sales representing over one third of the company's annual sales so far.