The Japan Preview: 9/19 Edition (Japan Still Loves Pokemon) - News
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 19 September 2010 / 6,558 Views
Summary & A Look Ahead:
Nintendo and the Pokemon Company released Pokemon Black / White this week in Japan for the DS. Despite launching late in the tracked week, Nintendo sold roughly 1.8 million units of Pokemon Black / White, a slight improvement on the opening week figures for Pokemon Diamond / Pearl. Nintendo likely didn't ship quite enough copies of Pokemon at launch, as major titles almost always increase by 30% to 100% from final preorder value to week one of sales but Pokemon preorders were only topped by 10% opening week.
Openings of over 1 million units in week one are quite rare in Japan - Pokemon Black / White is just the 26th game to accomplish the feat in the history of Japanese video games. With an opening of 1.8m units, Pokemon Black / White is the ninth largest opening week of all time in Japan. It is the second largest opening in Japan this generation (i.e. for Wii, PS3, X360, DS or PSP), behind only Dragon Quest IX for DS. On a worldwide basis, the game is already amongst the twenty biggest single platform openings of the generation, and amongst the top thirty of all time, despite launching in only one region for two days.
Besides Pokemon it was a pretty quiet week. Microsoft launched Halo: Reach in Japan, but the title did not open too well . It opened very similarly to Halo 3: ODST, with sales of about 35,000, as compared to Halo 3 which opened to 60,000 units in Japan. A new Yu-gi-Oh 5D for PSP and Front Mission Evolved for the HD systems both had fairly modest debuts as well - charting in the mid five digit range at launch. Dead Rising 2 will probably going to open slightly stronger than Front Mission, perhaps approaching 80,000 units week one between the two HD systems going by preorders, but software sales are set to remain rather quiet for X360 and PS3 for the next six weeks in Japan. Wii should remain quiet for the next month as well, but Kirby's Epic Yarn and Super Mario Collection are coming in October, with Donkey Kong Country: Returns set to follow sometime thereafter.
On the preorder front, Sony's flagship Playstation title Gran Turismo 5 has preorders of 95,000 units with about a month and a half to launch. Capcom's major PSP title Monster Hunter Portable 3 is rising quite rapidly now. Preorders for the title stand at 650,000 units. An opening week of well over a million units is possible for the game if preorders continue to rise as they are.
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 September 19, 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: Sengoku Basara 3 is stabilizing rather nicely at 4,000 units. Capcom may yet end up selling 150,000 units of the game on Wii in Japan. Wii Party meanwhile is now a million seller in Japan, joining the 12 other games to top 1 million units on Wii. Wii Fit Plus, Super Mario Galaxy 2, and Metroid: Other M should all be over 5,000 units in the final data for Wii this week. Expect Wii hardware sales to remain in the 13,000 to 17,000 unit range for the week.
PS3 Software: Square-Enix sold about 45,000 copies of Front Mission this week - with nearly 90% of the sales on PS3. Modern Warfare 2 (Bargain) looks like it will push up MW2 figures nicely in Japan, as its not declining very quickly. Still, PS3 only had two games top 5,000 units in Japan for the week, and the next few weeks look quiet as well. Expect PS3 hardware sales to remain in the 15,000 to 20,000 unit range for the week.
X360 Software: Microsoft sold 36,000 units of Halo: Reach in Japan. While 50,000 units is all but assured for the title, Halo: Reach probably won't reach even 100,000 units in Japan, which shows how big the disparity is between Western (where the game is a flagship title for Microsoft) and Japanese tastes for video games. Front Mission Evolved also charted for the X360 this week, but sold far better on PS3, even accounting for base size. Expect X360 hardware sales to rise into the 3,000 to 5,000 unit range for the week.
PSP Software - Yu-Gi-Oh Tagforce opened at roughly the same level as its recent precedessor from September 2009. Mon Hun Nikki continues to sell well on PSP, as does the 2G entry in the Monster Hunter series. Otherwise, PSP had a pretty quiet week. Blue Roses was the only title to open to over 10,000 units, and given that the company behind it was Nippon Ichi, the result may not be too far from what was expected. Expect PSP hardware sales to fall into the 25,000 to 30,000 unit range for the week.
DS Software - Pokemon opened very well. Final preorders were roughly on par with week one sales - indicating that supply was at least somewhat constrained. Opening to 1.8m is still opening to 1.8m though. Next week will be telling - the drop off will show whether or not the game had supply issues across Japan or just in our early sample. Gigant Battle held somewhat poorly, but will probably drop very slowly from here on out and comfortably pass 200,000 units in Japan lifetime. Friend Collection, Art Academy, and Inazuma Eleven 3 will be over 5,000 units in the final data, in addition to the titles above. Expect DS hardware sales to rise into the 45,000 to 60,000 unit range on Pokemon Black / White.
Contact Vgchartz at jmazel@vgchartz.com
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@ethomaz: Dengeki still has the Wii ahead of PS3.
I wouldn't worry about GT5 preorders. Rationally it's obvious to conclude a fanbase simply does not vanish they should come in time. Besides NSMBWii also had pretty pathethic preorders and look what happened.
Wii party tops 1M units.
My god!!! Pokemon is a beast! im guessing a 500k+ week 2 is possible... it would be phenomenal!
Pokemon is sold out in Japan in first day or so... Of course it will have long long legs... and, i think it can become the best selling game ever in Japan (beating original Red/Blue with 7 mln+ based on Enterbrain data.), because DS userbase now is more than 30 mln (more than ever around the debut of other generations of Pokemon) and B/W is most wanted Poke game ever, according to COMG.net, with enormous numbers of preorders pt. Nintendo, btw, not preparing more than 2 mln. for launch. Hehe, it's their plan, to keep the game in center of attention a long time...
[img]http://www.true-gaming.net/tgupload/images2/1%28375x338%29.jpg[/img]
@ryuzaki
PS3 already outsold Wii YTD by all tracks.
Famitsu and VGC: Three weeks ago.
MC: Last week.
PS3 can outsell Wii ytd this week! 頑張れ!
It has a chance as it will also have more days of being on sale the first week. JP games usually release on Thursdays, but Pokemon games are always released on Saturdays. This time MHP3 will be released on a Wednesday (Dec. 1st as that will be the 5th anniversary of MHP's release), so it will have 1 day extra compared to regular games and 3 days extra against Pokemon for the first week's sales.
"trestres
2 hours ago
Stellar opening, although it could have easily been a 2m plus start if allocations had been available.
I suspect MHP3rd could have an even bigger FW. 2 million plus could be happening considering how hardcores the MH fanbase on PSP is and knowing that already more than 4 million people own the prequel. On top of that it's releasing during the holidays and there's a special MH themed PSP releasing along with the game."
sony should make add veryy fast in japan for gt5, if trend goes like it is not sony must be lucky to sell around 600k copies.. instead of maybe 2mill
wii... 13k?
Agreeing with trestres, I believe Monster Hunter Portable 3 has a good chance of outselling Pokemon Black/White for first week sales. It will be interesting to watch indeed, and I am also curious as to how well Black/White will perform in comparison to Diamond/Pearl.
The new Pokémanz is already out in Japan? O_o I had no idea!
Reasonable HW sales for all at this time of year. A bit surprised at Halo: Reach I was expecting an opening week of somewhere between Halo 3 and MW2. (50-60K). Perhaps this is the one market where Halo fatigue really has set in. Perhaps it will leg it out to 100K, it would be a shame if it didn't because every main series Halo game has hit 100K in Japan.
Stellar opening, although it could have easily been a 2m plus start if allocations had been available.
I suspect MHP3rd could have an even bigger FW. 2 million plus could be happening considering how hardcores the MH fanbase on PSP is and knowing that already more than 4 million people own the prequel. On top of that it's releasing during the holidays and there's a special MH themed PSP releasing along with the game.
Is that all Halo Reach could do, the past games all did extremely well Japan.
So, Black/White is already the best selling game of the year in Japan?
Great opening for Pokemon, but I'm guessing that Nintendo isn't really concerned about the game breaking any first week records.
