Skyward Sword Sells Less Than 320K In Its Japanese Holiday Debut

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has completely fallen off the top software sales charts in Japan, selling less than 320,000 copies in its debut holiday month. The Wii game, considered by many as one of Nintendo's biggest releases for the system, has sold considerably less copies than other recent mainline entries for the long-running Legend of Zelda series, such as Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks. Debuting at the top of Japan's software charts in late November, Skyward Sword saw its sales drop quickly not long afterward, and it failed to break into the top 20 two weeks ago. Holiday shopping hasn't generated enough interest to push the game back in this week, either. For comparison, 2009's The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks sold around 500,000 copies in its first five weeks on Japanese store shelves, while 2007's Phantom Hourglass moved 631,100 during the same length of time. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, which accompanied Wii's 2006 launch, sold somewhere between 280,000-350,000 copies in its first week, but that was too a much smaller Wii userbase, and it was competing with a Twilight Princess SKU for GameCube. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has fared much better in the States, where in just the month of November, it sold around 600,000 copies. Another noticeable absence from last week's top software sales chart are the PS Vita titles launched two weeks ago. Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational, Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Dynasty Warriors Next, and Lord of Apocalypse all failed to make a return to the list. The chart does not include digital sales, though, and all of PS Vita's launch titles are available via PSN, priced cheaper than listings at brick and mortar locations -- Sony Computer Japan CEO claims initial download sales for PS Vita are "exceeding expectations". As for games that did make the top 20, 3DS's Mario Kart 7 sold 260,836 copies last week, while Super Mario 3D Land moved 174,566 copies. Both first-party games have now sold over 1 million copies each. Capcom's Monster Hunter 3G is close to hitting that same milestone before the end of the year, too. It sold 115,069 copies, and has pushed 885,456 copies since shipping three weeks ago. Final Fantasy XIII-2, which saw one of the poorest debuts for a main entry of Square Enix's flagship franchise, dropped from the number one spot last week to fifth place, selling 118,816 copies for a total of 643,033. New games appearing on the chart this week include Koei Tecmo's Warriors Orochi 2 for PS3 (200,526 sold), as well as Bandai Namco's SD Gundam G Generation 3D for 3DS (90,873 sold) and Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable for PSP (57,320 sold). Level-5's Inazuma Eleven Strikers 2012 Extreme for Wii (85,117 sold) and Square Enix's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - Dubbed Edition for PS3 (51,156 sold) also shipped this week. The complete top 20 chart, as supplied by Media Create and posted by NeoGAF, is shown below: