Sony Still Top In Japan

Quiet would probably be the best way to describe April in Japan. At least from a gaming perspective.  The PS3 led home console sales for the month, maintaining a modest lead over the Wii.  The PSP-3000 was the best-selling console overall though if you combine the sales of the various PSP and DS models the DS family comes out top with 139,038 sales versus the PSP family’s 131,692.

At the start of April, Fist of the North Star carried on from where it had left off at the end of March, driving PS3 hardware sales.  In this first week of the month PlayStation had three of the top four games.  Fist of the North Star slipped to second spot, its 71k sales not enough to defend against the release of Etrian Odyssey III on he DS.  The Japanese game-buying public showed their love of baseball with Professional Baseball Spirits 2010 making third place on the PS3, fourth on the PSP and even the PS2 version made it to number ten.

From a PlayStation perspective the top of the software chart was little changed the following week.  Fist of the North Star was again second, this time behind New Super Mario Bros. Wii.  Pro Baseball Spirits held third and fourth spots with the PSP and PS3 versions respectively.  The PS2 version slipped to 11th spot.

Media Create also released some lifetime hardware sales figures.  A couple of weeks behind Enterbrain, it announced that the DS had passed the 30m mark, achieving that total in 5 years and 4 months.  They also revealed that the PS2 had sold 21.64m consoles, which they called “a feat unprecedented in Japan [for a home console]”.  To answer the obvious question before it arises, the Wii has only just recently passed 10m sales.

The following week saw New Super Mario Bros. Wii and the PSP and PS3 versions of Pro Baseball Spirits all holding position.  Fist of the North Star slid to fifth but also managed to pass the half a million sales mark.  No More Heroes was the only new release in the top ten with the PS3 version just pipping the 360 version by 610 sales (15763 vs. 15153).

This week the PS3 passed the 5m sales milestone, having taken three and a half years to reach that point.  Media Create also observed that PS3 sales were running 34% higher in the first four months of 2010 than they were in 2009.

The final week of April saw the release of the two NieR titles with their bizarre capitalisation.  NieR RepliCant on the PS3 hit number one with sales of 60,174 while NieR Gestalt on the 360 could only make it to number 11. The surprise appearance in the week’s chart was the PS3 version of the Game of the Year edition of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion which finally saw its Japanese release on the 22nd and made it to 9th spot with 12,479 sales.  The 360 version only managed to make 19th on the chart.

The hardware makers’ shares of the hardware unit sales were Sony 50.3%, Nintendo 47.6% and Microsoft 2% which makes this month’s corporate pie look like this:

Finally, here are the hardware unit sales numbers for those of you who do not like pictures.

Source: Media Create