Japan Charts: PS2 titles dominate as market slumps

The heavily new release driven Japanese software market has fallen back dramatically this week as few new releases graced retail shelves, with Hudson's PS2 RPG release Far East of Eden II taking the top spot.

The game didn't manage to break 100,000 units in its first week on sale, making it into one of the lowest selling titles to make number one in quite a while - although once you combine the sales of the GC version (which was released last week), it's managed about 120,000 units so far.

The only other new releases in the top ten are Sammy's Pachinko Slot! King Camel at number four, another PS2 title capitalising on the gambling obsession of many Japanese salarymen; and Taito's PS2 title Energy Airforce: aimStrike! at number eight.

The western interest in the chart, of course, is Grand Theft Auto 3, which was released by Capcom in Japan last week and achieved a pretty respectable number two ranking. It's down to number three this week, with a very significant fall in unit sales - but still a strong performance for a non-Japanese game, and one which ranks GTA3 as one of the most successful overseas titles ever released in Japan.

Eight of the top ten titles are PS2 games, with one GBA game (Nintendo's Legendary Stafy 2) and one GC game (Nintendo's Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour) making it into the chart.

In terms of hardware sales, no big surprises are in store; the GBA has 46.75 per cent of the marketplace in total, leading the PS2 which get a boost to slightly over 40 per cent. The Cube is down in the ranking, falling back to 10.58 per cent having managed around 15 per cent for a number of weeks on the trot.

At the lower reaches of the hardware chart, the Xbox almost manages to garner a full percentage point of market share this week, with 0.95 per cent, ahead of the PSone on 0.79 per cent.

Data courtesy of Media Create Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
The Copying or Reproduction of this Document is Strictly Forbidden.
Visit Media Create for more information.