Japanese sales - Idolmaster tops the chart, while Vita falters
Posted 01 Nov 2012 at 12:13 by Aaron Clegg
Another week goes by with the timely reminder that cute, anime girls are the key to a pertinent market in Japan.
It actually wasn't a terribly big week in terms of major releases, which resulted in a new-look top-five consisting of decent-to-good debuts. Among them, the only game on a Nintendo platform was J-Pop sim AKB48+Me on 3DS. Topping the software chart was the latest entry in the heavily-exploited Idolmaster franchise.
Enjoying a sterling third week was Square-Enix's original 3DS JRPG Bravely Default, which is showing remarkable legs for its genre. No western release is yet confirmed.
Here is the full Media Create software chart for the week of October 22nd to 28th.
| Game/ Sales | Platform | Publisher | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Idolmaster: Shiny Festa 119,132 | PS3 | Bandai Namco |
| 2 | Dark Souls with Artorias of the Abyss Edition 67,002 | PS3 | From Software |
| 3 | Zone of the Enders HD Edition 44,751 | PS3 | Konami |
| 4 | AKB48+Me 40,542 | 3DS | Kadokawa |
| 5 | Borderlands 2 36,068 | PS3 | Take-Two |
| 6 | Bravely Default: Flying Fairy 31,001 / 213,960 | 3DS | Square-Enix |
| 7 | Resident Evil 6 24,263 / 794,352 | PS3 | Capcom |
| 8 | New Super Mario Bros. 2 24,010 / 1,295,634 | 3DS | Nintendo |
| 9 | World Soccer Winning Eleven 2013 18,810 / 325,157 | PS3 | Konami |
| 10 | Borderlands 2 18,699 | 360 | Take-Two |
| 11 | Little Battlers eXperience W 16,509 / 93,966 | PSP | Level-5 |
| 12 | Forza Horizon 15,468 | 360 | Microsoft |
| 13 | Style Savvy: Trendsetters 11,446 / 148,119 | 3DS | Nintendo |
| 14 | Tousouchuu: Shijou Saikyou no Hunter-Tachi Kara Nigekire! 10,130 / 213,767 | 3DS | Bandai Namco |
| 15 | The Legend of Heroes: Zero no Kiseki Evolution 7,735 / 29,254 | PSV | Nihom Falcom |
| 16 | Pokemon Black 2 / White 2 7,402 / 2,815,250 | NDS | Nintendo |
| 17 | FIFA 13 6,646 / 42,446 | PS3 | Electronic Arts |
| 18 | Rocksmith 5,663 / 24,142 | PS3 | Ubisoft |
| 19 | Project X Zone 5,480 / 103,469 | 3DS | Bandai Namco |
| 20 | Street Fighter X Tekken 5,420 | PSV | Capcom |
No real movement on the hardware front, although 3DS continues to stay above that 60k mark. Contrastingly, Vita suffers its worst week yet in Japan, dipping below 6k for the first time ever, making those weeks where we'd wonder if it'd ever go under 10k seem like a paradise.
| System | This week's sales | Last week's sales | Life-to-date sales | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nintendo 3DS | 61,542 | 60,232 | 7,808,452 |
| 2 | PlayStation 3 | 20,364 | 21,354 | 8,558,902 |
| 3 | PlayStation Portable | 14,541 | 15,575 | 19,397,594 |
| 4 | PlayStation Vita | 5,806 | 6,791 | 1,020,850 |
| 5 | Wii | 3,744 | 4,035 | 12,583,118 |
| 6 | Xbox 360 | 1,931 | 2,150 | 1,598,161 |
| 7 | PlayStation 2 | 1,006 | 1,081 | 21,823,388 |
| 8 | Nintendo DS | 441 | 529 | 32,872,791 |
