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This comes out every week, of course, but this week is worth posting because it's a major holiday in Japan.



Software top 50:

This week/Last week/Platform/Title/Publisher/WTD/LTD

01./01. [NDS] Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings (Square-Enix) - 109,326 / 383,330
02./03. [WII] Super Paper Mario (Nintendo) - 90,151 / 310,182
03./04. [WII] Wii Sports (Nintendo) - 84,782 / 1,543,596
04./12. [NDS] Yoshi's Island DS (Nintendo) - 58,948 / 791,132
05./06. [WII] Wii Play (Nintendo) - 58,718 / 1,279,131
06./08. [NDS] Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis (Nintendo) - 57,741 / 233,477
07./05. [WII] Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree (Nintendo) - 55,165 / 97,424
08./14. [NDS] New Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo) - 51,681 / 4,419,592
09./02. [NDS] Momotarou Dentetsu DS: Tokyo & Japan (Hudson) - 45,662 / 124,642
10./13. [NDS] More Brain Age (Nintendo) - 44,047 / 4,238,185

11./09. [NDS] Phoenix Wright 4 (Capcom)
12./20. [NDS] Mario Kart DS (Nintendo)
13./15. [NDS] More English Training (Nintendo)
14./10. [NDS] Panel de Pon DS (Nintendo)
15./19. [NDS] Brain Age (Nintendo)
16./22. [NDS] Animal Crossing Wild World (Nintendo)
17./16. [NDS] Prof. Layton and the Mysterious Village (Level 5)
18./29. [NDS] Common Knowledge Training (Nintendo)
19./34. [NDS] Dragon Quest Monsters Joker (Square-Enix)
20./30. [NDS] English Training (Nintendo)
21./26. [NDS] Word Puzzle Mojipittan DS (Bandai-Namco)
22./23. [PSP] Monster Hunter Portable 2nd (Capcom)
23./36. [NDS] Pokémon Diamond (Pokemon)
24./41. [NDS] Pokémon Pearl (Pokemon)
25./17. [PSP] Final Fantasy (Square-Enix)
26./28. [PS2] Pro Baseball Spirits 4 (Konami)
27./18. [PS2] Persona 3: Fes (Atlus)
28./47. [NDS] Tamagotchi's Splendid Rainbow-venture (Bandai-Namco)
29./07. [WII] One Piece: Unlimited Adventure (Bandai-Namco)
30./38. [NDS] Kanji Test (Rocket Co.)
31./32. [PS2] Musou Orochi (Koei)
32./49. [NDS] Crayon Shin-chan DS: Arashi wo Sakebunutte Crayon Daisakusen! (Banpresto)
33./48. [WII] Wario Ware Smooth Moves (Nintendo)
34./37. [NDS] Kanji Brain Test 2M (IE Institute)
35./00. [NDS] Big Brain Academy (Nintendo)
36./31. [NDS] Nodame Cantabile (Bandai-Namco)
37./45. [NDS] Tetris DS (Nintendo)
38./42. [PSP] Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball Portable 2 (Konami)
39./46. [NDS] DS Kageyama Method Electronic Kanji Drills (Shogakukan)
40./11. [NDS] Daito Giken Official Pachislo Simulator DS: Ledendary Treasure; Osu! Banchou; Yoshimune (Paon)
41./00. [NDS] 1000 Recipes (Nintendo)
42./00. [NDS] Kirby Squeek Squad (Nintendo)
43./00. [NDS] Cooking Navi (Nintendo)
44./00. [NDS] Puyo-Puyo! (Sega)
45./00. [NDS] Dragon Ball Z: Harukanaru Goku Legend (Bandai-Namco)
46./00. [NDS] Phoenix Wright 2 (Capcom)
47./00. [NDS] Digimon Story: Sunburst (Bandai-Namco)
48./00. [NDS] IQ Supply (Spike)
49./39. [PS2] Kingdom Hearts II: Final Mix+ (Square-Enix)
50./40. [PSP] Gundam SEED Alliance vs. ZAFT Portable (Bandai-Namco)

NDS - 36
WII - 6
PS2 - 4
PSP - 4

all courtesy Cheesmeister@GAF

EDIT: Spelling fixes

Short version: Nintendo owns massively.

I find amusing that not one PS3 product made the list, especially in light of four PS2 games being there.

Hahahaha the PS2 sold more units in a week than the PS3 hahaha.

Uraniun235 wrote:Hahahaha the PS2 sold more units in a week than the PS3 hahaha.

I don't know why everyone *likes* you and *hates* me after you're so callous.

Is the Japanese gaming market really so dominated by the DS?

Stark wrote:Is the Japanese gaming market really so dominated by the DS?

Very yes.

Notice that New Super Mario Bros. is still in the Top Ten even after nearly an entire year since its release...

Ironically, I own more DS games than all other consoles combined. I guess I can see where they're coming from.

Stark wrote:

Uraniun235 wrote:Hahahaha the PS2 sold more units in a week than the PS3 hahaha.

I don't know why everyone *likes* you and *hates* me after you're so callous.

My bitterness is masked by my wacky hijinks!

Uraniun235 wrote:My bitterness is masked by my wacky hijinks!

I must master the art of lolcats to continue?

I just noticed that Brian Age is still on that list - is that really such a consistent seller, even after all this time? Madness.

Nintendo devouring the competition.

Stark wrote:

Uraniun235 wrote:My bitterness is masked by my wacky hijinks!

I must master the art of lolcats to continue?

I just noticed that Brian Age is still on that list - is that really such a consistent seller, even after all this time? Madness.

Madness? This is JAPAN! So your statement is correct.

Uraniun235 wrote:Hahahaha the PS2 sold more units in a week than the PS3 hahaha.

That's been pretty much standard. The PS3 has never outsold the PS2 AFAIK, even in the US.

Xisiqomelir wrote:This comes out every week, of course, but this week is worth posting because it's a major holiday in Japan.

And we care about the Japanese, why?

MKSheppard wrote:

Xisiqomelir wrote:This comes out every week, of course, but this week is worth posting because it's a major holiday in Japan.

And we care about the Japanese, why?

Because japanese graphs never fail to have 60%+ wii/DS sale's and people love nintendo

MKSheppard wrote:

Xisiqomelir wrote:This comes out every week, of course, but this week is worth posting because it's a major holiday in Japan.

And we care about the Japanese, why?

ITT Shep learns about world economics.

DPDarkPrimus wrote:ITT Shep learns about world economics.

I seem to recall a thread not so long ago, saying that LOL TEH X-BRICK was an utter failure because the Japanese refused to buy it; conviently forgetting about US/European/Other sales.

MKSheppard wrote:

Xisiqomelir wrote:This comes out every week, of course, but this week is worth posting because it's a major holiday in Japan.

And we care about the Japanese, why?

Even though it's a relatively smaller market, Japan is incredibly important because of all the big developers there. A few are willing to make games meant primarily for overseas audiences (cf. Mistwalker) but most won't try anything if they don't think it will do well domestically. Whoever owns Japan is gonna have most of its big games, many of which are very popular elsewhere.

Andrew J. wrote:

MKSheppard wrote:

Xisiqomelir wrote:This comes out every week, of course, but this week is worth posting because it's a major holiday in Japan.

And we care about the Japanese, why?

Even though it's a relatively smaller market, Japan is incredibly important because of all the big developers there. A few are willing to make games meant primarily for overseas audiences (cf. Mistwalker) but most won't try anything if they don't think it will do well domestically. Whoever owns Japan is gonna have most of its big games, many of which are very popular elsewhere.

I will quote a series of prior posts from our last discussion on this Here.

For some reason, theres been this perception that Japan matters as anything more then an indicator of Japan. From idiots going "X failed in Japan,it sucks!" to Japanese Developers thinking the same games that win in Japan will win world wide(the examples are countless). This perception, that Japan is somehow, as importent as the EU and the U.S, is false.

The traditional quote used for proving Japan is big is, from Wikipedia, "The three largest markets for computer and video games are the United States (largest), Japan (2nd largest) and the United Kingdom (3rd) also in that order as the largest producers of video games."
Notice the hidden problem here, they're counting UK, a country with half the population of Japan(60 million, compared to 127 million). Instead, they should compare the EU as a whole, which is considered mostly a single market by most publishers.

However, looking at raw numbers, you can easily see why.
European reporting group.
At more than £2 billion in 2003, the market for video games in the UK is the largest in Europe and the third largest in the world, after USA and Japan.

Gee, I wonder what happens when we total the European market as a whole.
Doing a rough total on the European market as a whole(from the graph at that link), I get 8,150 million euro in sales. As you will see later, the numbers are not far off.

Working from here, a thread on a random forum, I get more precise number. Before anyone whines about using a thread, all these numbers are sourced.

From that link, we get the following numbers for 2004, the last year these numbers are listed as hard rather then estimates.

In a Capcom financial report, I found regional market sizes for total game software.
Japan
2004 - $3.5b
North America
2004 - $7.7b
Europe
2004 - $6.3b

What do we get from that? Something rather silly, Europe is nearly TWO times the size the Japanese market, software only.

I doubt the hardware market is enough to change the ratios significantly, though in the interest of preventing anyone from saying otherwise, the numbers From gamespot.

However, Hardware income was down by 37.4 percent to 440.7 billion yen ($4.09 billion), a direct result of price cuts.

This counts only Japanese hardware publishers, but considering that MS is a non player in that market, thats good enough.

Unfortunately, equivalent numbers for the European numbers are hard to come by, as Xisiqomelir noted in another thread, not many statistics are gathered across Europe for the video games industry and those that are gathered and usually not compatible.


However, Courtesy of this website, I have some numbers.

For 2002, Japan Yen 245 bn in PC+Console software, roughly 1.525bn Euro. In comparison, Europe console software for 2002 is listed as Euro 4.6 bn and Europe PC software is listed as Euro 2.5 bn.

Clearly, if Japan is the second largest video games market out there, every single statistic out there is flat wrong. Since we know that these statistics are not wrong by this large an amount, we can flatly ignore people going "Japan is a very impotent market"

Regarding developers being important.

Already happening, as anyone reading threads in G&C will notice, there is an upswing in games coming from Europe, esspecially the UK. At the same time, eastern european developers are slowing breaking into the mainstream. STALKERs ukrainian team was the first, but there are quite a few eastern europe companies working quietly and making reasonably progress.

A backand forth between Nitram and I.

Nitram wrote: And this is quite good, because diversity of developers can only help consumers. But I think this trend will continue within the console industry for a while, especially since there's is a substantial benefit to being a tried and true source of quality, which many Japanese developers are.

Me wrote:This trend is changing, or more percisely, the games Japanese developers are making are not selling as well. Most of the big 'consistent' Japanese Franchises such as Zelda, Final Fantasy, etc. are having decreasing sales numbers compared to past itirations. This has been slightly offset by the recent sucess of the latest Zelda and Final Fantasy games.

Nitram wrote:Of course, just because the developer is in Japan doesn't mean you must conquer the land of the rising sun to get them onboard. See Dead Or Alive's transfer to the X-Box.

Me wrote:Not only that, lately there has been quite abit of interest from Japanese developers in the Xbox360, an interesting backlash against Sony rather then any sort of improvement in the Xbox360s standing.

EDIT: Lately this has changed, more developers are being won over by the Xbox360s sucess in the U.S and consider it a key reason since the Japanese game market is not being very sucessful to anyone bar Ninny.


A quote by Vendetta is a good sum up.

Whilst the overall size of the software market in Japan makes it a still important market, the nature of it's software market for the last year means that as far as the Xbox 360 and PS3 are concerned, it's not the kind of make or break market that it used to be (and certainly nothing like as important as this article wants us to think).

The simple fact is that over 50% of software titles sold in Japan and just under 50% of game hardware sold are one system, Nintendo DS. The PSP takes a further 15% of the market. Home consoles as a whole are stagnant there, and the three current gen systems between them make up a squeak more than 10% of the total market, hardware and software. The only home system with healthy software sales is the PS2, and that's only due to it's currently installed userbase.

The US market, by contrast, is much more even, with around 30% software sales and 20% hardware sales on the DS, and the next gen home consoles taking 35% of hardware sales and 40% of software sales. (the Wii has the largest share of the hardware pie, the Xbox sells more software)

This is the reason that the games that Japanese developers are pushing the hardest on the Xbox 360 are ones they can sell in America and Europe, because that's the way to make money from home console software, you sure as fuck aren't going to make it in Japan, where you might make a dent with a Wii title, but largely not, because it's software sales aren't great, everyone just buys Wii Sports.

Hopefully someone bothered reading all that and I won't have to post again why Japan is over-considered.
Yes, It has alot of the big name developers, but most of those are not as important as past years. Between falling sales numbers, gamer drift and a general growth in other studios, these studios are falling behind and are forced into a series of mergers, contracts with the big publishers, etc.

MKSheppard wrote:

Xisiqomelir wrote:This comes out every week, of course, but this week is worth posting because it's a major holiday in Japan.

And we care about the Japanese, why?

They make games too.

EDIT: Oh shit, I read Ace's post and now realised Japan doesn't matter. Someone had better go make a thread of that significant EU market that gets titles released first and is treated well by the industry.

Lately this has changed, more developers are being won over by the Xbox360s sucess in the U.S and consider it a key reason since the Japanese game market is not being very sucessful to anyone bar Ninny.

Not this "third parties don't sell well on Nintendo systems" crap again! There are plenty of non-Nintendo games that have had sales success on Nintendo systems, in Japan and elsewhere.

The EU as an entire market is certainly large, much larger than Japan, I never denied that. However, it has its own problems that make its importance to video game companies less than it otherwise should be. In the past there was the whole NTSC->PAL conversion process, which was a pain in the ass that thankfully seems to be going away. There's still the translation issue, because each game has to be translated several times before release-that's the main reason so many games come out much later than they do in the United States and Japan, or in many cases not come out at all.

It's unfair and unjust, but despite the size of its market most Japanese and stateside companies are perfectly willing to screw over Europe to one degree or another. There's a reason sales data is organized into three categories: Japan, US, and the rest of the world.

(Apparently, though, Europeans are fucking lucky compared to Australians. Some of the stories I've heard...)

EDIT: Oh shit, I read Ace's post and now realised Japan doesn't matter. Someone had better go make a thread of that significant EU market that gets titles released first and is treated well by the industry.

What a gigantic red herring. I never said either of those.
I was replying(in a haphzard fashion) to Andrew.

Even though it's a relatively smaller market, Japan is incredibly important because of all the big developers there. A few are willing to make games meant primarily for overseas audiences (cf. Mistwalker) but most won't try anything if they don't think it will do well domestically. Whoever owns Japan is gonna have most of its big games, many of which are very popular elsewhere.

I was replying to the bolded parts, both of which are false. The assumption that Japan has the most important game developers is quite false for obvious reason. Furthermore, the assumption that whoever wins Japanese sales wins the developers is also false. Not only have there been many developers(among them several Japanese companies) who have not developed specifically for Japan, but neither is Nintendo itself aiming only at Japan.

Not this "third parties don't sell well on Nintendo systems" crap again! There are plenty of non-Nintendo games that have had sales success on Nintendo systems, in Japan and elsewhere.

Obviously there are sale sucesses, but historically, up to the Gamecube days, the Nintendo platform was dominated by Nintendo itself.
With the Wii, this is changing, however, Nintendo is clearly letting the Third-party studios fend for themselves. EA and Ubisoft have had to market themselves, while Sony/Microsoft both heavily promote third party developers as critical. It is a fundamentally differant approach. One relies only upon itself, the other considers the entire developer 'ecosystem'(I hate that word) as critical to sucess. Both have been sucessful in the past and present.

The EU as an entire market is certainly large, much larger than Japan, I never denied that. However, it has its own problems that make its importance to video game companies less than it otherwise should be. In the past there was the whole NTSC->PAL conversion process, which was a pain in the ass that thankfully seems to be going away. There's still the translation issue, because each game has to be translated several times before release-that's the main reason so many games come out much later than they do in the United States and Japan, or in many cases not come out at all.

It's unfair and unjust, but despite the size of its market most Japanese and stateside companies are perfectly willing to screw over Europe to one degree or another. There's a reason sales data is organized into three categories: Japan, US, and the rest of the world.

No one is talking about the EU as treated by publishers. I am going by numbers. The numbers show that the EU is a bigger market. I am not going to argue PERCEPTION of areas. In which case Japan could convinceably be argued as more important then the U.S. That is irrelevent, the relevent part is as bolded in the top of my post, which is Andrew J. claiming that all the main developers are in Japan, and that Japan is crucial to world gaming domination.

There is no doubt that the EU has been fucked over by publishers, thanks to issues I've covered, such as regulations, and by technical issues such as NTSC/PAL conversions. Both are slowing being solved, with the primary barrier now being languages. However, this does not change the fact that the EU, even with the current issues still remaining, is bigger.

Ace Pace wrote:What a gigantic red herring. I never said either of those.

That wasn't my intention at all, I was stating my own points.

Xisiqomelir wrote:

Ace Pace wrote:What a gigantic red herring. I never said either of those.

That wasn't my intention at all, I was stating my own points.

That's pathetic, even for you.

Oh shit, I read Ace's post and now realised Japan doesn't matter.

How can that be construed to be anything but a mischaracterization of Ace's point?

SPC Brungardt wrote:

Xisiqomelir wrote:

Ace Pace wrote:What a gigantic red herring. I never said either of those.

That wasn't my intention at all, I was stating my own points.

That's pathetic, even for you.

Oh shit, I read Ace's post and now realised Japan doesn't matter.

How can that be construed to be anything but a mischaracterization of Ace's point?

Don't get mixed up here, him saying Japan isn't the most significant market is wrong. He didn't actually say Europe was important.

Xisiqomelir wrote:
Don't get mixed up here, him saying Japan isn't the most significant market is wrong. He didn't actually say Europe was important.

I never stated if I thought Europe was important or not. Neither did I state that Japan is not important. My point is quite simple, Japan as a factor on the gaming world is over-rated. Both in terms of sales and as being the be-all end-all of development.

More on topic.

I’m all for the expression of love in public. Love is a beautiful thing, but when it begins to turn into infatuation, problems arise. Feelings are hurt, tires are slashed, dead horse heads are found on pillows. Just ask Mitch about his experiences, he’ll tell you.

So it scares me a little to see that the loving relationship that budded not to long ago between Nintendo and Japan has become a bit, intense. Sure, it starts with the DS Lite breaking 10 million sales in Japan. That accounts for almost half of DS Lite sales. That seems like a nice, healthy expression of love from Japan.

But then you factor in this week’s Japanese Software numbers… and you realize that the first title that is not on Nintendo hardware on the list is at number 22. And that 26 of the top 30 are made up of Wii and DS titles. The picture becomes a lot more, sinister. Get out while you can Nintendo… get out while you can.