Japanese Videogame Stats Illuminate, Confusticate

Thanks to Game Science for its article analyzing Japanese videogame hardware and software sales for the first half of 2004. Of particular interest are the hardware sales for consoles ("PlayStation 2 - 1,365,260... Nintendo Gamecube - 340,204... Xbox - 18,239"), million-selling games ("Pokemon Fire Red & Leaf Green - 2,136,737... Dragon Quest V - 1,572,497... Sengoku Musou - 1,002,312"), a rare Western game popular in Japan ("Grand Theft Auto Vice City - 367,302"), a list of the publishers with the most games in the Top 100 ("Nintendo - 28...Bandai - 9... Konami - 8"), and the note that "The [videogame] market has increased 7.7% on the same period last year", meaning previous depressed forecasts for the Japanese games industry might not be entirely correct.

Comments

Grand Theft Auto

[dammitallgoodnamesgo]

A "rare western game popular in Japan"? It's British, the Japanese have never been afraid to buy British games. It's American games they've always been wary of. Plus, being published by Capcom can hardly have hurt (Then again Arx Fatalis was published by Capcom in Japan, and seems to have gone to the bargain bins fairly quickly)

Re:Grand Theft Auto

[ag0ny]

Arx Fatalis has not been translated into Japanese. That's quite a problem for a game that requires a lot of interaction with NPCs (lots of talking and reading).

Re:Grand Theft Auto

[dammitallgoodnamesgo]

Oh yes it has

Japan isn't the only market out there

[kevinatilusa]

January through November 2003 U.S. Sales:

PS2: 4.41 million
Gamecube: 2.12 million
Xbox: 2.03 million

Seems like a significant player to me

(This is according to http://www.vgpro.com/news/4121 ; I'd welcome a second source)