The Japan Preview: 7/18 Edition (Huge Week for SW) - News
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 18 July 2010 / 3,782 Views
Summary & A Look Ahead:
July continues to be a strong month for Japanese software sales. This week, the top twenty games sold over one million copies.
The enormous software volume for the week ending July 18, 2010 comes from the depth of hits recently released. For the week, six titles topped 50,000 units - not a common feat. Of those, Dragon Quest Monsters: Battle Road Victory and Fire Emblem: Shin Monshou no Nazo Hikari to Kage no Eiyuu topped 200,000 units while Wii Party hardly dropped from last week coming in at over 150,000 units in week two. The opening for the new Fire Emblem on DS is the strongest opening for a Fire Emblem title in Japan since Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu released back in May 1996. The reason for the stellar opening is that the title is related to Fire Emblem: Monshou no Nazo for the Super Famicom, which has the strongest Fire Emblem sales ever in Japan at 700,000 units with a week one of 340,000+. With good legs, Fire Emblem: Shin Monshou Nazo Hikari Kage no Eiyuu could be the first Fire Emblem in years to top 500,000 units in Japan.
Sqaure-Enix released the other major new title of the week - Dragon Quest Monsters: Battle Road Victory which is a multiplayer battle game set in the Dragon Quest universe. The game sold roughly 225,000 units in its debut - a bit smaller than the opening for Dragon Quest Swords which released in 2007. Swords had pretty bad word of mouth and dropped off quickly though so in the end Battle Road may end up with a similar total despite the lower opening.
Beyond the major openings, Konami's latest Jikkyou baseball game had a very respectable first week on PS3 and PSP - coming in at 133,000 between the two platforms. On PSP Last Ranker from Capcom and the new Momotarou from Hudson had solid openings as well. Numerous titles continued to have good legs this week as well. Wii Party, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Winning Eleven, Inazuma Eleven 3, and the recent Taiko game for DS all are selling sizable amounts over long timeframes.
As far as preorders, Monster Hunter Portable 3 remains way out in front with 290,000 preorders as of July 18. The upcoming Hatsune Miku for PSP has 100,000 preorders ahead of its late July release for PSP. Sengoku Basara 3 looks like it will do well too. The game will have three skus on Wii, in addition to releasing on PS3. For Wii the top sku has 15,000 preorders while the PS3 version has 60,000 preorders. With the controller bundles though, my guess is the Wii version has more like 20,000-25,000 preorders. With over a week left for preorders to rise, the PS3 version could see a 120,000 week one while the Wii version could see a 50,000 week one.
Understanding the Japanese Preview:
Rather than saying x game for y platform sold between 20,000 and 28,000 units as in the past, the preliminary data will be broken down into charts by platform. Within these charts, there will two additional categories besides the rounded sales figure under ‘sales’. On the left will be ‘low end’ depicting the lowest amount the title likely sold for the week, while to the right will be ‘high end’ depicting the highest amount the title likely sold for the week. As always, this data is preliminary, and therefore, not final, but it is based on a sample. The varying platform market share the sample represents is why consistent sellers like Wii Fit Plus do not always appear in the preliminary data. Sales for this report are for the week ending July 18, 2010.
Software by Platform:
Figures are listed by the age of the platform, for the top twenty sku information that we recieve early.
Wii Software - While Battle Road Victory was the top selling Wii game of the week, the story on the Wii side is how well Wii Party has held. The edition of Wii Party not bundled with a controller sold 145,000 units for the week. Last week, the bundled controller versions were 20% of total Wii Party sales. Thus even with even a smaller percentage of Wii Party units sold, it is likely that Nintendo sold 160,000 or more units of Wii Party - only about a 30% drop off from week one. Wii Fit Plus, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and Mario Kart Wii should be over 5,000 units in the final data as well, and Xenoblade might be there as well. This week actually marks the first time in over six months that Wii has had two titles top 100,000 units in Japan. Expect Wii hardware sales to rise into the 25,000 to 35,000 unit range on Dragon Quest Monsters, which has a different base than Dragon Quest Swords did.
PS3 Software - Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu 2010 did pretty well on PS3 - Konami sold almost 100,000 units week one. White Knight Chronicles 2 fell to 44,000 units in its second week but the game should eventually get to nearly 300,000 units in Japan. Winning Eleven continues to slowly drop off in Japan but it will reach about 200,000 on PS3 which is about 4% penetration in Japan. Blazblue and Atelier may also be above 5,000 units in the final data. Expect PS3 hardware sales to remain in the 16,000 to 22,000 unit range as Sony makes way for the new PS3 model on July 29.
X360 & PS2 Software - No games charted in the preliminary data for either system. Crackdown 2 for X360 may be above 5,000 units in the final data though. Expect X360 hardware sales to fall into the 3,000 to 5,000 unit range for the week while PS2 hardware sales remain in the 1,000 to 2,000 unit range.
PSP Software - Five new PSP games charted this week. Capcom had the biggest new game. Last Ranker sold 57,000, outpacing Konami's latest baseball game by almost 50%. Hudson's newest Momotarou sold about 37,000 on PSP but should have legs fairly similar to the Wii and DS versions. Battle Masters and Naruto Shippuden will likely struggle to break even with debuts at only 16,000 units. Winning Eleven and Monster Hunter continue to leg out big totals by stubbornly selling 5,000 to 10,000 per week for weeks on end. Boku no Natsuyasumi Portable 2 may also be over 5,000 units in the final data. Expect PSP hardware sales to remain in the 25,000 to 30,000 unit range for the week.
DS Software - As mentioned above, Fire Emblem had a stellar debut by the standards of the series - the latest game could top 500,000 units in Japan. Inazuma Eleven 3 fell to 53,000 units but will likely begin to "hold" for a number of weeks at 25,000-40,000 units. Taiko and Harvest Moon both fell to about 20,000 units for the week and each game will end up selling more than 100,000 units in Japan. Beyblade had a low debut, 12,000, but it may leg out 30,000 - 50,000 units eventually. Digimon had a bit of rebound this week for some reason - with sales back up to 7,000 units. Girl's Side Story, Tamodachi Collection, Eigokoro (Art Academy), Love Plus +, Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2, and Pokemon Heart Gold / Soul Silver should all be over 5,000 units in the final data as well. Expect DS hardware sales to remain in the 45,000 to 60,000 unit range for the week.
Contact Vgchartz at jmazel@vgchartz.com
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Oh i think Wii hardware will be much higher than that. 30-40k
I hope the new FE remake come out over here Europe
good
how does the ds continue to sell so many units??
Kinect is MS's last roll of the dice in terms of getting any additional traction in Japan. It's still created a reasonable base for the next generation, but that base could easily be erroded if Sony are competetive out of the gate. Moneyhatting will still be needed from MS next go round to capture those Japan-centric exclusives.
Impressive for Wii Party, another evergreen title for the Nintendo money printing machine. Wii HW predicted to possibly beat PSP too.
PS3 seems to be cruising along, not doing any thing special, but still putting up reasonable numbers. I wonder if the new sku's are going to make any imact though. Bigger HDD's at the same price point isn't exactly going to set the market on fire. Still I guess some people are probably going to hold off buying so they can get that extra 40/70Gig of space. Dunno why they didn't go 250/400Gig. Having a smaller HDD than the 360s seems like an unnecessary "disadvantage" given the cheapness of HDDs per Gig of space.
I think PS3 needs its own Monster Hunter game. Seems odd to be the lonely orphan console on that front.
Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu was very popular in the PS and the PS2 era. I think they went with the Wii this gen but with no success. It seems they wanted to try something else and go with the PS3 and it sold quite well and just ok on the PSP.
I was hoping for a better second week for WKC2.
I really hope they'll bring the new Dragon Quest on Wii here in America as I liked Dragon Quest Swords.
