Sony’s PS2 and Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance (GBA) again dominated ...
Sony’s PS2 and Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance (GBA) again dominated videogame hardware sales in Japan, Media Create (MC,www.m-create.com) data for the week ended Aug. 8 showed. PS2 won the week with a 47.46% market share, up from 43.54% a…
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week ago (CED Aug 9 p8). GBA followed with 42.63%, down from 43.9%. MC said 39.69% was the front-lit GBA SP and 2.94% the standard system. Nintendo’s GameCube once again trailed with 9.46% (down from 11.96%). But GameCube sales again far outpaced Xbox. MC said Microsoft’s console had only a 0.29% share, down from 0.41%. Sony’s legacy PS one console and Bandai’s handheld SwanCrystal had 0.07% and 0.08% shares, respectively, vs. the 0.10% and 0.09% each had a week ago. MC said sales of the top 100-selling games in Japan totaled about 1.34 million units -- up 53.18% from a week ago and 37.37% better than the weekly average. It said the significant improvement was driven by sales of #1 World Soccer Winning Eleven 8 for PS2 from Konami, which sold about 697,000 units in its first week. MC noted that was a better start than the 7th entry in the series, which sold only about 642,000 units in its first week. Because sales of Eleven 7 reached one million, MC predicted it was “only a matter of time” before sales of the latest game hit the same mark “and one can expect it to outpace its predecessor.” MC said game sales topped one million units in the week for the first time since the 4th week of May. Apparently helping: 26 new titles made the top 100. But MC said that although new releases “accounted for a significant 66.78% of total sales,” most of those sales came from Eleven 8. While Nintendo’s GBA title Legendary Stafy 3 at #2 saw relatively strong sales of about 42,000 units, MC said sales of other new games were “all below 20,000 units.” It said there was “a lack of middle-sized titles” in the week to balance out the big hits. Only 2 other GBA titles made the top 10: Square Enix’s Final Fantasy I & II Advance at #4 (down 3 from a week ago) and Konami’s Power Pro-kun Pocket at #8 (down 2). Only one GameCube title made the top 10: Nintendo’s Paper Mario RPG at #3 (down one). Rounding out the top 10 were other PS2 titles: Konami’s Jikkyo Power Pro. Baseball 11 at #5 (up 2), Sammy’s Pachinko Slot! Fist of the North Star at #6, Namco’s Taiko no Tatsujin: 4th Generation at #7 (up 2), Sony Computer Entertainment’s SOCOM II: U.S. Navy SEALs at #9 and Bandai’s One Piece Round the Land at #10 (down 7).