Nintendo Dominates Japanese Sales Charts

by Mike Sklens - May 11, 2007, 8:08 am EDT
Total comments: 9 Source: Gamasutra

Nintendo sweeps the top 21 in game sales for "Golden Week".

Nintendo's been going strong in Japan for awhile now, thanks to the phenomenon known as the DS Lite, and growing interest in Wii. During Japan's "Golden Week" series of holidays, the top 21 selling games were all for Nintendo platforms. Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, for Nintendo DS, took the top spot with 109,326 units. Super Paper Mario was the top selling Wii game, coming in at number two overall with 90,151 units sold. The first non-Nintendo platform game on the list is Capcom's Monster Hunter Portable 2nd for the PSP, and ranks in twenty-second. Check out the top ten below:

[NDS] Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings (Square-Enix) - 109,326
[WII] Super Paper Mario (Nintendo) - 90,151
[WII] Wii Sports (Nintendo) - 84,782
[NDS] Yoshi's Island DS (Nintendo) - 58,948
[WII] Wii Play (Nintendo) - 58,718
[NDS] Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis (Nintendo) - 57,741
[WII] Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree (Nintendo) - 55,165
[NDS] New Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo) - 51,681
[NDS] Momotarou Dentetsu DS: Tokyo & Japan (Hudson) - 45,662
[NDS] More Brain Age (Nintendo) - 44,047

PRESS RELEASE

Nintendo Claims Another Month of Sales Victory in April

Japan isn't the only territory where Nintendo is cleaning up. DS, Wii, Pokemon, and Mario top the charts in this first peek at the April NPD numbers.

NINTENDO NEWS: NINTENDO RUNS THE TABLE IN APRIL SALES

May 17, 2007

Already riding a streak as America's No. 1 seller of video game consoles, No. 1 seller of portable game systems and No. 1 publisher of video games, Nintendo added more chips to its pile in April-with not just one, but the country's four best-selling games.

According to independent sales data gathered by the NPD Group, the two best-selling games in April were Pokémon® Diamond and Pokémon® Pearl, exclusively for the Nintendo DS™ hand-held game system, followed by Super Paper Mario™ and Wii Play™ for the Wii™ home video game system. Combined sales for the two related Pokémon titles exceeded 1.75 million units in just 14 days of availability during the reporting period.

The DS remained the most popular game system of any kind in April, with projected sales of more than 470,000 units. At the same time, the Wii from Nintendo, despite nearly universal sold-out status, was still purchased by twice as many consumers as any other home game console, according to the NPD data. Unit sales of 360,000 Wii systems in April bring the console's installed base in America to nearly 2.5 million in less than six months on the market.

"Nothing is more valuable in the entertainment world than an evergreen franchise," says Reggie Fils-Aime, president and COO, Nintendo of America. "These new Pokémon titles have cemented their place alongside the most enduring intellectual properties of the book, music and movie industries. And that appeal will expand even further with the introduction of Pokémon® Battle Revolution to our Wii home console next month."

Talkback

BlackNMild2k1May 11, 2007

Why mention a sweep of the Top 21 but only list the Top 10?

And if you look at he whole chart Nintendo took almost the entire Top 50 with 42 of the 50. Its complete Nintendomination, and it will probably only get worse (or better depending on how you look at it.) in the very near future. I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo took the Top 27 next week with 29 out of the 30.

WuTangTurtleMay 11, 2007

wtf, how the hell is that even possible? Did stores stop selling PS2 stuff?

Seriously that is unbelievable news.

NinGurl69 *hugglesMay 11, 2007

It's not unbelievable. The future is now.

The traditional hardcoor driven market is shrinking, therefore the Playstation era is dying.

Long live short easy non-gaming.

KaironCarmine Red, Associate EditorMay 11, 2007

Don't worry, FF: Tactics just came out on the PSP and sold 100k units on the first day to rescue the game industry from Nintendo.

DasmosMay 12, 2007

pitiful. i expected more from nintendo.

Sir_StabbalotMay 12, 2007

Flawless Victory!

It's safe to say Japan is firmly in Nintendo's zone of control.

Bill AurionMay 12, 2007

Quote
Originally posted by: WuTangTurtle
wtf, how the hell is that even possible? Did stores stop selling PS2 stuff?

Seriously that is unbelievable news.

Unlike other territories, when "next gen" comes around in Japan, the last gen falls flat on its face...

TJ SpykeMay 12, 2007

You mean when next gen comes around, non-Nintendo systems fall flat on their face. PS3 is just barely floating above 10K a week and Xbox 360 is basically a non factor. DS has won the handheld war and Wii has just about won the console war (the only way PS3 will win is if the Wii suffered the largest collapse in the history of consoles, even more than Dreamcast). The PS3 has NEVER outsold Wii since it launched (even when the PS3 got a game Japanese love like Gundam Mousou and Wii had no new games), at the current rate of sales the Wii will reach 3 million before the PS3 even hits 1 million.

Golden Week hardware sales:
Hardware - This Week | Last Week | YTD | LTD
1. NDS - 285,192 | 256,063 | 2,888,392 | 16,894,071
2. WII - 101,320 | 102,522 | 1,452,172 | 2,371,815
3. PSP - 35,172 | 33,860 | 839,395 | 5,371,524
4. PS2 - 14,815 | 12,584 | 324,604 | 20,479,463
5. PS3 - 12,974 | 12,791 | 417,056 | 874,614
6. 360 - 3,205 | 3,162 | 93,550 | 358,252
7. GBA - 653 | 1,125 | 35,307 | 15,333,386
8. NGC - 394 | 167 | 6,763 | 4,176,231

UERDMay 13, 2007

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

Good riddance. At least we can be assured that the future of video gaming is not a dreary mass of sci-fi FPS games, each looking more similar to the last.

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