Japanese Sales Charts, Week Ending November 27

Japanese sales have ramped up another level in the march towards the winter gift-giving season, with sales 89 percent above the average, and over 1 million units sold overall – the first time that milestone has been broken since the third week of September. Amidst the thirty new releases in the top 100, the Nintendo DS has once again emerged as dominant, more than doubling its hardware sales from last week’s already impressive numbers, thanks to significant software support. DS' boost has particularly been led by the enormous success of Oide yo Doubutsu no Mori (aka Animal Crossing: Wild Word) which sold as many as 325,466 units. With GameCube beat ‘em-up Naruto 4 at number two, and the latest in Capcom’s Mega Man Battle Network series on the Game Boy Advance at numbers three and five, Nintendo’s current performance seems to suggest that the company’s “three pillars” hardware approach is definitely working - in Japan at least. The latest Naruto title sold 122,322 units, a very impressive number for a third party GameCube title. But combined sales of Capcom’s newest Mega Man Battle Network iteration would have beaten it to number two if sales of the two versions were combined. Oddly, though, sales for the two versions (which like many Pokémon games differ only in very minor ways – to encourage trading of items) were far less even than normal, with the Grega version selling 107,099 units, but the Faltzer version just 65,560. Elsewhere in the top ten (which is notable for being the first since May not to feature a Brain Training game) Namco’s Soul Calibur III also performed well, with 106,920 sales – above the previous title's PlayStation 2 first week total of around 80,000, but below the total for all three format versions of 150,000. The success of Ratchet: Deadlocked at number five is also impressive, with 85,487 units sold, confirming the series as the most popular of Sony’s Western-developed franchises in Japan. In hardware sales, the Nintendo DS sold 132,012 units for a 57.51 percent share of the market. PSP sales were only down a little on last week, though, with 51,196 units sold and a 22.30 percent market share. Despite the release of the limited edition “Satin Silver” PlayStation 2 console, the format could only manage 27,545 unit sales for a 12.00 percent market share, with retailers complaining of a lack of marketing for the new color, which had been expected to significantly improve PlayStation 2 sales over the winter. The Game Boy Advance family of consoles had a 5.91 market share (Game Boy Micro: 7,594, Game Boy Advance SP: 5,709, Game Boy Advance: 241), the GameCube 2.23 percent and the Xbox 0.06 percent.

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