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Top Japanese Sellers of 2005
Gamasutra reports on a partial list of the top-sellers in the Japanese market for last year. From the article: "With the Nintendo DS dominating hardware sales during the year, it was no surprise to find Oide yo Doubutsu no Mori (aka Animal Crossing: Wild World) at number one with approximately 1.17 million copies sold. The second ranked title, and one of the few games to feature prominently in the top tens from all three countries, was Sony's Gran Turismo 4 for the PlayStation 2, with 1.07 million units sold."
The 1,084 new releases in Japan during 2005 sold a combined 55.43 million units
Nintendo easily dominated the other publishers during 2005 with 13.32 million software units sold
Nintendo is Doomed, and no one wants their games, after all ONLY 1 IN 4 GAMES in Japan was published by Nintendo.
As noted, the Nintendo DS was the best selling hardware of the year, with more than 4 million units sold, compared to 2.23 million for the PSP, 2.13 million for the PlayStation 2, 831,221
And just look at how the Gimicky Nintendo DS only OUTSOLD THE PSP AND PS2 COMBINED; obviously people don't want new gameplay experiances, they want the same games repackaged with prettier graphics (oh yeah, and HD, got to have HD)
I'm surprised to see Gran Turismo 4 in second place. I was under the impression that the Japanese market wasn't a kind place to racing games.
Also, I haven't played GT4 yet, but have spent many hours on the first two incarnations of Project Gotham Racing on the XBox. PGR2 is a lot less arcadish than the first PGR, demanding more precision driving. But is PGR2 comparable to GT4, or is it a beast on its own? And if it is comparable, why isn't it helping sell the XBox in Japan?
Animal Crossing is probably the best-seller for the DS in the States, too. When I went to buy a copy my local EB said they were sold out for three weeks.
:)
Luckily, I can play Mario Kart online to heal my wounds
Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
so I have a DS, and I play lots of mario kart on it. great fun etc etc.
been reading a lot about nintendo's "lets make fun games and not harp on about specs" party line and I dig it.
so I decide to try out animal crossing. after tinkering with it for about 3-4 hours, I still fail to see how this is fun or even a game at all.
I've never played the sims, but to me it seems that animal crossing is essentially goal-less, and there are a stack of mini-games like "fishing", "bug catching", or "collecting shells on the beach" that, to me at least, are about as fun as navel gazing.
Isn't it true that these numbers only count toward new games. If someone bought a game new, then sold it back. And some other person bought the used game... it still counts as 1 unit sold.
Didn't FFXII come out in Japan already considering that it's due out in the US in a matter of weeks? Guess the fact that it didn't make any of the top 10 lists bodes poorly for the company. I swear, if they make an RPG that explores similar sci-fi themes to FF7 (evil corproration opressing the people) and throw in some dramatic twists and horriffic tragedies (the plate collapsing on the slum residents of midgar) they'll have another winner on their hands. It's a sorely underrepresented genre in videogames, and one of the reasons "Beyond good and evil" was so much fun (its just that noone played it because it wasn't an established franchise.. the FF series on the other hand...).