Japanese Sales Charts, Week Ending April 10th

Despite the company having three new entries in the top ten, including the top entry, Bandai's Japanese sales this week have not been quite the success the company would have been hoping for. Sales of Bandai's last comparable title, Mobile Suit Gundam: Encounters in Space, were around 395,000 in its first week, whereas this week's PlayStation 2 debut of Mobile Suit Gundam: One Year War managed less than half of this at 159,000. In fact, demand was so unexpectedly low for this positively reviewed, Namco co-developed title that only 36 percent of stock were sold out in stores. Bandai’s fighting game Saint Seiya: Chapter Sanctuary has been far less well received by the Japanese press, but nevertheless managed a relatively impressive 89,226 unit sales. The overall slow rate of sales in Japan at the moment, though, can be seen when one considers that Bandai’s third new title, based on the popular Space Battleship Yamato anime, managed to get to the number nine spot with only 9,450 sales. In hardware sales, the Nintendo DS has outsold the PSP for the third week running, making any chance of Sony’s portable catching up with the Nintendo DS user base even more unlikely in the short to medium term. Indeed, with new entry Wipeout Pure being the highest ranked PSP title this week at just number 15, and therefore presumably selling much less than 9,000 units, software sales are arguably a more significant problem for Sony at the moment. Overall, though, it was the PlayStation 2 that dominated hardware sales this week, just as it has dominated software, with 37,870 units sold for a 33.07 percent market share. The Nintendo DS was next with 30,028 sales and a 26.22 percent market share, followed by the PSP with 28,848 unit sales and a 25.19 percent market share. Next was the Game Boy Advance with a 12.26 percent market share, followed by the GameCube with 2.97 percent and the Xbox with 0.27 percent.

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