Japan’s October Hardware Sales

This month’s Japanese sales figures give us our first opportunity to see what the reaction has been to the recent PSPgo price cut. Predictably, and fortunately for Sony assuming they are not losing money on every unit sold, Japanese gamers reacted positively, buying three times as many PSPgo consoles last week than they typically do.

That sharp increase in sales has meant that for the first time since April the PSPgo has outsold the PS2 for the month.  To find a higher weekly total for the PSPgo you have to look all the way back to the first week of January, when it sold 3,903 units.

To put this month’s PSPgo unit sales figures into perspective though we should compare them to those of the PSP-3000.  Across the whole of October the ’3000 outsold the ‘go by 24 to 1.  Even in the week of the price cut that ratio only dropped to 13 to 1.  In the run up to Christmas I cannot see the release of the custom Monster Hunter PSP-3000 hurting sales, so the ‘go will continue to struggle to close the gap.

What also remains to be seen is whether the price drop leads to a continued higher level of sales.  It is possible that it may cannibalise some of the PSP-3000′s sales.  Especially if Sony continue to show that they are learning from their digital-only “experiment” in the way they have done with the PSN Store pricing of God of War: Ghost of Sparta.  Though, naturally, growing anticipation of the PSP2 may begin (and indeed, may already be) depressing sales.

We will have to wait for the next few months’ figures to find out but for now we are far from done with this month…

Week Ending October 3rd

Pokemon Black/White began October as it had finished September.  It remained at the top of the software chart comfortably outselling its nearest rival.  This month that was the PSP title K-On! Houkago Live!!, a music game based on the K-On! anime and manga series, which managed 170,848 sales against Pokemon’s 374,859.

In a week where the software top ten was dominated by hand held titles, home console games only managed to secure three positions.  Dead Rising 2 took two of those, 5th and 6th, with its PS3 and 360 versions respectively, which sold 79,695 and 43,800 copies.  The ever-present Wii Party took the third charting in 8th adding another 33,067 to its steadily growing sales total.

Week Ending October 10th

Pokemon still reigned supreme this week with 231,638 sales but PS3 titles took the largest number of places in the top ten.  Coming closest to dethroning the incumbent was the hybrid Blu-ray containing both the Macross F Trial Frontier PS3 title and the film Macross F Itsuwari no Utahime.  While the film is available separately on DVD this was the only way to buy it on Blu-ray so it is unknown how many of its 152,699 sales were to people who simply wanted the Blu-ray version of the film.

Two other PS3 new releases made the top ten Red Dead Redemption in 4th place with 70,599 sales (7th and 25,673 for the 360 version) and F1 2010 in 8th having sold 25,273 copies.  The fourth PS3 title was Dead Rising 2 which clung onto 9th place with its undead fingernails and 24,416 sales.

Week Ending October 17th

Easing its way past the 4 million total sales mark Pokemon once more held top spot with 168,541 sales.  The Wii’s Kirby’s Epic Yarn entered the chart in second place with 92,280 sales.  Personally this is one of my most-anticipated titles so I am gutted we still do not have a UK release date, more so than for GT5.

The top title for Sony’s platforms was PSP new release Lord of Arcana which made it in at third with 69,932 sales.  In a quiet week for software sales that saw the bar for entry into the top ten set at on 9,761 sales, Dead Rising 2 on the PS3, the only other new entry in the top 30 was NBA 2K11 on the PS3 which only made it to 19th with just 5,167 sales.

Week Ending October 24th

Has the Wii saturated its home market?  That is the suggestion from the fact that the release of a new Mario title had no visible impact on Wii sales.  Finally removing Pokemon from the top of the chart was Super Mario’s 25th Anniversary boxset selling 307,755 copies.  Pokemon only slipped to second though with its 81,915 sales.

Five new PS3 titles entered the top ten this week; Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 in third with 63,675 sales, Vanquish in fourth with 48,318 (360 version down in 14th with 11,204) Medal of Honor in sixth with 25,365, Beat Sketch! in eighth with 22,165 and FIFA 11 in ninth with 18,995.

This was the week that the PlayStation Move was released in Japan and the aforementioned Beat Sketch! was obviously the only launch game to land in the top ten.  Elsewhere in the top 30 were Time Crisis: Razing Storm, the Move-enable Resident Evil 5 and Sports Champions which charted in 12th (12,653), 16th (9,399) and 19th (6,349) respectively.

Week Ending October 31st

PlayStation titles landed a strong one-two combination on the Nintendo challengers to dominate the top of the software chart.  Winning the sales race was Namco’s answer to Monster Hunter, God Eater Burst on the PSP which sold 263,150 copies.  In second place and providing a healthy boost to its host console’s sales was World Soccer Winning Eleven 2011 (aka Pro Evo) with 215,257 which contrasts nicely with FIFA’s opening last week.

The 360 version of Winning Eleven only made it to 36th place, down where sales figures are not revealed but the game in 20th sold 7,130 copies so draw your own conclusions.  New release Fable III managed to chart in eighth place with 20,025 sales.  While we are looking at releases on consoles which sold fewer hardware units than the PSPgo this week (yes, the PSPgo outsold the 360 as well) a PS2 new release, Hakuouki: Reimeiroku, made it up to 12th in the software chart selling 14,864 copies.

The Monthly Console and Corporate Fights

Across the month the PS3 beat the Wii (110,895 vs. 63,009), the DSs beat the PSPs (245,564 vs. 186,853) and as you have already seen the PSPgo turned the tables on the PS2 (7,490 vs. 6,957).

Overall shares of the month’s hardware unit sales see Nintendo just edging out Sony.  Out of the 625,966 consoles sold Nintendo accounted for 49.3% (308,573), Sony 48.7% (304,705) and Microsoft 2% (12,688).

Finally, for those who prefer their numbers straight up:

Source: Media Create