Japan Sales Thread *renamed

Is that 360 number right? Are we certain they didn't just add a 0?

No it's right. Last week one of the bigger Tokyo based stores released some press statement that they sold a butt-load of X360s.

It seems the recent price drop together with Ace Combat 6 caused a sales spike. Let's see how this pans out over the next few weeks.
 
Is that 360 number right? Are we certain they didn't just add a 0?
XB360 sold 35,000 units with Blue Dragon, so there's nothing out of the ordinary here with the release of AC6. Popular titles tend to peak up sales. The going concern is always sustained sales. PS3 has seen a notable drop, which I guess is due to the imminent hardware releases. Then we'll see a spike, and then a drop down to a normal level which'll show if Sony have managed to gain market presence or not. Same with all the machines. Any initial increase or decrease shouldn't be looked at as indicative of any major shift in interest. Trending needs time to identify any trends!
 
Lost Odessey should be other big 360 game for Japan this year. That might help the HW numbers a bit also. Next week, I believe, the 360 will have passed the Xbox 1 for lifetime sales in Japan.
 
XB360 sold 35,000 units with Blue Dragon, so there's nothing out of the ordinary here with the release of AC6. Popular titles tend to peak up sales. The going concern is always sustained sales. PS3 has seen a notable drop, which I guess is due to the imminent hardware releases. Then we'll see a spike, and then a drop down to a normal level which'll show if Sony have managed to gain market presence or not. Same with all the machines. Any initial increase or decrease shouldn't be looked at as indicative of any major shift in interest. Trending needs time to identify any trends!

In the case of the 360, the 'normal' level (post-spike) has slowly but steadily been rising after each major release.
 
01. [WII] Super Mario Galaxy (Nintendo) - 251,000 / NEW
02. [360] Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation (Bandai-Namco) - 77,000 / NEW
03. [NDS] Final Fantasy Tactics A2 (Square-Enix) - 51,000 / 193,000
04. [PS2] Super Robot Wars Scramble Commander the 2nd (Banpresto) - 21,000 / NEW
05. [NDS] DS Literature Collection (Nintendo) - 18,000 / 72,000
06. [NDS] DS Nishimura Kyotarou Suspense Detective Series: Deadly Intent (Tecmo) - 18,000 / 115,000
07. [WII] Wii Sports (Nintendo) - 16,000 / 2,182,000
08. [NDS] Flash Focus: Vision Training in Minutes a Day (Nintendo) - 15,000 / 676,000
09. [NDS] World Soccer Winning Eleven DS: Goal to Goal (Konami) - 15,000 / 44,000
10. [NDS] Pokémon Mysterious Dungeon: Time Expedition Party (Pokémon) - 14,000 / 552,000

11. [NDS] Kanji Brain Test 2.5M (IE Institute)
12. [WII] Wii Play (Nintendo)
13. [PS2] Ar Tonelico 2 (Banpresto)
14. [NDS] Pokémon Mysterious Dungeon: Shadow Expedition Party (Pokémon)
15. [NDS] Mario Kart DS (Nintendo)
16. [WII] Mario Party 8 (Nintendo)
17. [PSP] Gundam Battle Chronicle (Bandai-Namco)
18. [NDS] Kanji Test 2 (Rocket Co.)
19. [NDS] Dragon Tamer: Sound Spirit (Bandai-Namco)
20. [NDS] New Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo)
21. [360] The Idolm@ster (Bandai-Namco)
22. [PS2] Dragon Ball Z: Sparking! Meteor (Bandai-Namco)
23. [NDS] Tamagotchi no Puchi-Puchi Omisecchi: Thanks Everybody! (Bandai-Namco)
24. [NDS] More Brain Age (Nintendo)
25. [NDS] My Housekeeping Diary (Nintendo)
26. [WII] Ghost Squad (Sega)
27. [NDS] Animal Crossing Wild World (Nintendo)
28. [PSP] Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII (Square-Enix)
29. [360] Earth Defense Forces 3 (D3 Publisher)
30. [PSP] Monster Hunter Portable 2nd (Capcom)

NDS - 16
WII - 5
PS2 - 3
PSP - 3
360 - 3
 
In 2 days (11/11) Ratchet will finally be out in Japan. And DualShock3 too!

I was really really looking forward to trying the Uncharted demo with DS3 this weekend. But oh well...

It does seem kind of strange to do a product launch on a Sunday. But I guess for marketing reasons they thought 11/11 would be catchy.
 
If the 360 beat the PS3 by a mere 200+ then I believe this marks the first time the 360 outsold the PS3 a week in Japan. Still both consoles are doing crap and I doubt the 360 numbers are going to hold up. I'm expecting -300% drop for 360 next week. Both PS3 and 360 needs to streamline Japanese centric titles over there. Massive price drops don't really work there as it does in other countries.
 
Surely that last pricedrop to what was it, $199 in Japan?, helped all this too.
 
If you're selling 40 units a week for 20 weeks, then you drop to 20 one week then 24the next , and finally 27 would you report that as continued slump or a sales increase?

.../backs away slowly

I wouldn't report it as either on its own, that would be pretty bad/bias reporting.

BTW that's not exactly what's happened with Wii is it?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
BTW that's not exactly what's happened with Wii is it?

The last few weeks were its lowest sales ever in Japan by significant margins. Even this last week at 41k (with the release of super mario), I think it is down from any point prior to september.
 
I'd be a bit surprised if it did. This large sale is just the usual hardware-change-rush preceded by a dip, when XB360 topped PS3 sales. There's always a 'calm' before a 'storm' and then things settle down quite a bit. My guess is sales will manage 2/3rds of Wii, from 16k to ~22 k, at best. There's nothing really out to sell PS3 more than it has been other than a slight price reduction of 5000 yen from the previous minimum entry price. Unless there's a sudden rush of EoJ interest or something, the core reasons to own a PS3 versus the cost aren't much changed from a week earlier, so the sales shouldn't be changing much either. Unless 5000 yen is a breaking value for Japanese buyers, with a large market that has just been waiting on a sub-40,000 yen price before buying, like people waiting for a <£300 in the UK.
 
A perhaps more recognisable source:

PlayStation 3 'back from the brink'

Price cuts and new games may have helped Sony's beleaguered PlayStation 3 console to turn the corner, say analysts in Japan.

The PS3 [all models] sold 65,000 units during the second week of November, showing substantial growth from the 16,000 units during the first week," said Katayama. The sales exceeded forecasts by more than 50 per cent.

An eagerly-awaited new game for the PS3, Dynasty Warriors 6, sold 180,000 copies during the week, indicating that owners have not lost interest in the console, according to figures from local research firm Media Create.

That was also only one day of 40GB sales (it was released on the last day of that week).
 
I'd be a bit surprised if it did. This large sale is just the usual hardware-change-rush preceded by a dip, when XB360 topped PS3 sales. There's always a 'calm' before a 'storm' and then things settle down quite a bit. My guess is sales will manage 2/3rds of Wii, from 16k to ~22 k, at best. There's nothing really out to sell PS3 more than it has been other than a slight price reduction of 5000 yen from the previous minimum entry price. Unless there's a sudden rush of EoJ interest or something, the core reasons to own a PS3 versus the cost aren't much changed from a week earlier, so the sales shouldn't be changing much either. Unless 5000 yen is a breaking value for Japanese buyers, with a large market that has just been waiting on a sub-40,000 yen price before buying, like people waiting for a <£300 in the UK.

Yep those are all fair points, I just have this cut feeling that we are at a turning point right now. GT 5 prologue is coming up soon, also Wii has lost little bit of its momentum and is not that much above PS3 in weekly sales ATM, though last week was better with Mario and probably Wii Fit will spike up things again... But despite that I'm thinking the demand of PS3 is rising all over the world right now, including Japan, where I think it will overtake Wii in weekly sales relatively soon, but we'll see, I'm not betting on this.
 
Back
Top