Nintendo Tops List For Annual Game Sales In Japan

Nintendo sold 11.2 million game units in Japan during the year, getting a big boost from Pokemon Ruby and Pokemon Sapphire for the Game Boy Advance -- which were the best-selling games during the 4/1/02-3/31/03 timeframe. Konami came in second place with 6.5 million units, helped by strong sales of World Soccer Winning Eleven 6. Bandai took the number three spot, riding on the success of the Gundam franchise. Coming as no surprise, Enterbrain reported that Xbox hardware sales were sluggish in Japan. According to the report, Microsoft sold just 187,389 Xbox consoles in the country during the period, compared to 3.4 million PS2s and 853,534 GameCubes. Total game hardware sales, including portable game machines, fell 19.8% from last year, to 8.8 million units. Enterbrain said that much of the shortfall was due to a drop in GameCube sales. On the bright side, total software were up 8.5%, to 56 million units.