By Thomas N on Nov 18, 2009

Like the previous week, Nintendo domination of the software chart. As I predicted last week, Bayonetta (PS3) and Persona 3 Portable (PSP) have fallen off the chart, only to be replaced by two new non-Nintendo system titles, this time J-League Pro Soccer Club o Tsukuro! Pride of J (PSP) and Dragon Ball: Raging Blast (PS3). They will lose more than 50% of their sales next week. I also predicted that Winning Eleven 2010, as typical of most high-selling games to fall several places this week. The three Nintendo stalwarts, while each losing a position, are still holding strong in the Top 10 software chart. It is a good debut for the The Crystal Bearers, but I predict that it will fall off the chart next week. Tales of Graces next month will do better sales for a third-party Wii game.

By emil on Nov 18, 2009

i guess this week ps3 will be again the most selling home console.
ps3 will be the most selling home console in 2009. in japan.who could guess.

By Ponkotsu on Nov 18, 2009

As usual, lots of Nintendo domination. Thomas’s analysis sounds pretty dead-on there. After the successes third parties have seen time and time again with big name high-effort and high-visibility titles on the Wii in Japan, it still makes one wonder how long it’s going to take for more of these developers to use their brains and refocus more fully on the Wii over the other two instead of claiming “console gaming is dead in Japan,” when the reality of it is, they’re just focusing on the wrong platforms that the market isn’t buying there.

By darxed on Nov 18, 2009

@Ponkotsu soooo…. successes from third parties on the wii? you mean like no more heroes, who sold the least in japan? http://www.vgchartz.com/games/gamesummary.php?id=7667 The only successful company on the wii is nintendo itself, thats why devs turn to the ps3 in japan

By larry on Nov 18, 2009

@darxed
those are fake VGCRAP numbers. vgcrap is owned by a 25 year old kid named ioi. vgchartz has no mechanism to track retail sales. all vgcrap numbers are just wild guesses

By Ponkotsu on Nov 18, 2009

Yes, DarkXed, No More Heroes tanked in Japan because it didn’t appeal to Japanese gamers and didn’t get much of an ad campaign. Giving out toilet paper, while ironic, doesn’t exactly appeal to the masses. In fact, No More Heroes is one of the worst examples you could go to for Wii third party games due to its niche nature and lack of appeal to the Japanese audience.

It’s funny how when people complain about Wii sales, the first things they jump to are either niche games (MadWorld being a popular one to jump to when the game was never remotely mainstream – it’s the Wii’s GodHand, and it’s already outsold GodHand on the PS2 several times over.) as so to compare them to HD blockbuster titles’ sales or titles that received little to no marketing as so to compare them to games with insane marketing campaigns.

And the fact of the matter is, No More Heroes is Suda 51′s biggest hit to date – his first real cult hit after Killer7 basically sank like a rock and most ignored his other games, and it was all due to popular word of mouth amongst Wii owners in the west, since Ubisoft and Rising Star didn’t advertise the game. All things considered, No More Heroes’ western sales are quite the feat, while their Japanese sales fall exactly in line with what you’d expect from a title like that there.

If you want to talk about third party successes on the Wii, let’s look at the elephant in the room, Monster Hunter 3. The PS3 crowd had been trash talking it ever since the project was moved to the Wii, insisting that it “couldn’t” do one thing or another due to the fact that it was on the Wii. Then it came out and quickly became the best selling Monster Hunter console release of all time there, and with Nintendo planning on backing its western release with a first party commercial campaign, it’ll undoubtedly be the biggest western release of a Monster Hunter game as well. A third party gave the Wii a huge, high-demand game, looking at what the CUSTOMERS wanted, marketed it, and proved again what third parties are capable of when they treat the Wii as seriously as the competing HD consoles that haven’t in any way earned the support they receive. (Especially in Japan, where even after sales bumps for major games, used consoles and copies of said major game flood retailers after most gamers there resell their 360s and PS3s to recoup most of their financial losses on the systems.)

This is a straight-up matter of third parties needing to pay attention to CUSTOMERS again, to look at the hardware they’re buying and develop games for them accordingly instead of trying to force them to buy systems the masses aren’t interested in. The mass market is no less important now than it was with the PS2 or PSX, and if anything, it’s far more important due to the debilitating costs of development on the HD systems and the extreme difficulty of recouping costs, let alone turning a profit, with the rather poor average software sales on both systems. You get your handful or so of blockbusters on each every year that sell very well, but for all of those, there’s numerous smaller name and off the radar games that lose incredible amounts of money because they were planned for the wrong platforms. It makes less sense for those systems to get the support they do now than it would have to have given the Gamecube and Xbox closer support to the PS2, financially.

By TheOne on Nov 18, 2009

As expected PS3 leads the way in Japan, and worldwide, this is expected and will continue into 2010,2011.

PS3 will overtake 360 in October 2010.

Steadily gaining ground in wii, wii’s biggest mistake will be a re-launch of the wii but in HD. Sales will continue to fall and nintendo will just make software.

You have been told the future by TheOne.

You are most welcome.

By RPGuy_AD on Nov 18, 2009

TheOne: Can I borrow your time machine? Or is it a crystal ball? ‘Cause the latter are VERY unpredictable in their performace!

By Alister @ Point of sale on Nov 19, 2009

With all those xbox bans I would think that will make some influence over these sales numbers as some people may go out and buy a different console.