Japan Charts: Software sales hit rock bottom as Golden Week ends
Square Enix' latest massively multiplayer title Front Mission Online has topped the Japanese charts this week, but a major slump in sales has seen the market hit the lowest ebb recorded in the last three and a half years.
Square Enix' latest massively multiplayer title Front Mission Online has topped the Japanese charts this week, but a major slump in sales has seen the market hit the lowest ebb recorded in the last three and a half years.
Only one other new release made it into the top ten, namely Nippon Ichi's PS2 RPG title Eternal Aselia: At the End of this Earth, with the remainder of the chart being comprised of the big sellers from over Japan's Golden Week national holidays, which ended in the previous week.
Overall sales for the top 100 were just 286,614 units, the lowest weekly sales figure to be recorded by market research firm Media Create in the last three and a half years, and down from 445,841 units in the same week last year.
Media Create attributes the poor sales to both a lack of key new titles during the week and the poor line-up of titles in the spring sales period - although a number of hit titles, such as Nintendo's DS exclusive Nintendogs and Square Enix' Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song, sold well during Golden Week and remained high in the charts this week.
In hardware terms, the Nintendo DS continued to outsell the PlayStation Portable, albeit by a smaller margin than in the last few weeks - with the DS taking just over 29 per cent market share, compared to 28 per cent for the PSP. The PS2 was on top once more, however, with over 30 per cent share.