With no new games, Vita sales keep dropping in Japan

PS Vita system sales finally hit 500,000 for the region in Japan last week, but its weekly numbers dropped by nearly 60 percent to 18,361 units. This is the first week since PS Vita's Japanese launch in mid-December that hardware sales have dropped below 20,000. Its performance so far is tracking behind early sales for Nintendo's 3DS (launched in February 2011), PlayStation 3 (2007), and PSP (2004). Despite the low numbers, Sony Computer Entertainment America's hardware marketing director John Koller said last week that there was "no concern at all" from the company on the diminished sales for its new handheld since launching. He said the satisfaction rate for PS Vita owners is "really high," and commented, "We're still in the first couple weeks, and we're trying to get as many units into market as possible. We're going to give it some time, but overall those numbers have been to forecast." Some analysts, however, worry that PS Vita is facing several difficult challenges, including intense competition from 3DS and smartphones, the system's expensive pricing, and a lack of compelling launch games -- no PS Vita titles appear in Japan's top 20 software sales chart last week. 3DS also saw a drop of almost 60 percent in hardware sales last week, as hardware sales were down across the board, but its strong software slate and renewed interest for the portable kept its sales at 100,668. The system managed to outsell all other consoles combined. Below are the full sales rankings provided by Media Create and translated by NeoGAF for the week ending January 15, 2012 (The second chart lumps together sales of all models in a given line of hardware.):

As mentioned earlier, Super Robot Wars OG Saga: Masou Kishin II for PSP debuted last week, taking the top spot on the software sales chart after moving 81,896 copies. Other new releases include 3DS games Spirit Camera (16,351) and Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy (12,819). Other 3DS games like Mario Kart 7 (52,266), Monster Hunter 3G (44,644), Super Mario 3D Land (40,154), and Inazuma Eleven Go: Shine / Dark (20,777) continue to perform well despite dramatically reduced sales numbers after Japan's holiday purchasing season. Square Enix's Final Fantasy XIII-2 continues to suffer. It sold 14,407 copies last week and has pushed a total of 753,968 since releasing five weeks ago. That's less than half of what Final Fantasy XIII had sold at that point in its life, which was more than 1.8 million copies. The Nintendo-published Just Dance Wii crossed the 500,000 total sales mark last week after selling 12,370 copies. Quite a few evergreen Wii games continue to populate the bottom half of the top 20 chart, including Wii Sports Resort, Wii Party, and Mario Kart Wii. The complete top 20 chart, as supplied by Media Create is shown below: