Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance (GBA) and Sony’s PS2 again dominated ...
Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance (GBA) and Sony’s PS2 again dominated videogame hardware sales in Japan, Media Create (MC, www.m-create.com) data for the week ended Aug. 1 showed. GBA won the week with a 43.9% market share, up from 42.57%…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
a week ago (CED Aug 2 p7). MC said 40.97% was the front-lit GBA SP and 2.93% the standard system. PS2 followed with 43.54%, down from 46.1%. Nintendo’s GameCube once again trailed far behind, with 11.96% (up from 10.85%). But GameCube sales again far outpaced Xbox. MC said Microsoft’s console had only a 0.41% share, up from 0.31%. Sony’s legacy PS one console and Bandai’s handheld SwanCrystal had 0.10% and 0.09% shares, respectively, vs. the 0.08% each had a week ago. MC said sales of the top 100-selling games in Japan totaled about 872,000 units -- up 1.69% from a week ago but 9.23% lower than the weekly average. Although sales had “made quite a comeback after the slump of early July,” MC said the market continued to experience “a summer downturn,” like last year. It noted the top 100 games in the comparable week a year ago sold about 819,000 units. There were 21 new titles in the top 100 this time, headed by Square Enix’s Final Fantasy I & II Advance for GBA, which was the #1-selling game of the week, selling about 149,000 units. MC said it was the only game to break the 100,000 barrier in the week. Other new titles included Bandai’s One Piece Round the Land for PS2 at #3 (about 49,000 units) and Arika’s The Nightmare of Druaga for PS2 at #4 (43,000). MC said new releases accounted for less than 1/2 total sales, guessing that “the lack of big titles is probably one of the reasons for the chill in summer sales.” PS2 games dominated the top 10 and the other titles for Sony’s console that made the chart included Sammy’s Guilty Gear Isuka at #5, Konami’s Jikkyo Power Pro. Baseball 11 at #7 (down 4 from last week), From Software’s Tenchu: Kurenai at #8 (down 6), Namco’s Taiko no Tatsujin: 4th Generation at #9 (down 3) and Sammy’s Pachinko Slot! Fist of the North Star at #10 (down one). There was only one other GBA title in the top 10 -- Konami’s Power Pro-kun Pocket at #6 -- and only one GameCube title -- Nintendo’s Paper Mario RPG at #2 (down one).