Japanese game magazine publisher Enterbrain announced today that Konami has displaced Nintendo as that country's top-selling software publisher during the April-September period.
Konami sold 3.2 million games in the period, helped substantially by World Soccer Winning Eleven 6 for the PS2, which sold almost one million units alone and was the top-selling game in Japan. Nintendo claimed the second spot with sales of 2.4 million games, and Bandai took third with 1.7 million units. Enterbrain's market information was bad news for Microsoft -- the report said that the Xbox sold just 89,000 units in Japan in the six-month period. In contrast, Sony sold 1.62 million PS2 consoles, and 304,000 GameCubes were sold. Hirokazu Hamamura, Enterbrain's President, said Microsoft's weak sales in Japan were due to its US-centric game portfolio. "[Microsoft offered] games which were popular in the U.S. but not in Japan. And they failed to provide games specifically targeted for Japanese such as role playing games," Hamamura explained. As a whole, the Japanese console and mobile device market was off 29% compared to the same period in 2001, which Enterbrain said was caused by a large dip in Game Boy Advance software sales, which were off 9%. The recent Gamecube release Super Mario Sunshine was also a disappointment for Nintendo, racking up 600,000 units since its launch. While that's an impressive number, it's well below the levels reached by past marquee titles from the company.
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