Sales Chart JPN: Master Chief taking charge

Week 24 September - 30 September 2007

Microsoft's latest, and probably the most anticipated game, Halo 3, made the run around the world in September. And that includes Japan. As many gamer knows, Japan's game scene is not Microsoft friendly. Week after week, the Xbox 360 was outsold by the PS3 and Wii by a massive margin. But forget all that for the moment, because this week, Master Chief took charge and headed for the ichiban. You'd be surprised, but there are at least 58,672 Xbox 360 owner in Japan!

Microsoft should be thrilled. Nowhere near as much as Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core during the first two weeks, but impressive number considering that it's a game that is produced for a console that sell 10 times slower than the Wii. If it was released in Japan in the last two weeks, it would have failed. And talking about FFVII, it has dropped from 1st to 3rd (54,240), while Pokemon Dungeon continues to hold on to 2nd place (55,438). We certainly won't see the end of Pokemon or FF anytime soon.

Now for the shock. The highest placed Nintendo first party game is Mario Party 8 at... wait for it... 14th. That was the Wii's highest placed game as well. Hmm... Nintendo's party over?

Best selling games for each platform (that is on the chart) this week

XB360 - Halo 3
DS - Pokemon Dungeon
PSP - Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core
PS2 - Bleach Blade Battles 2
Wii - Mario Party 8
PS3 - The Elder Scrolls IV

Number of titles in the top 50 for each platform this week:

DS - 22
PS2 - 9
PSP - 7
Wii - 7
PS3 - 4
XB360 - 1

Console War VII: Battle for Nippon

For the third week running, the Japanese still haven't got enough of the slimmer PSP. Maybe gamers are getting second handheld consoles, maybe everyone in Japan has already got a DS, who knows.

Halo 3 helped Xbox 360 to increase sales almost 4000 units more than previous week. PSP gone back down to about 100,000, but still ahead of the DS. It's going to be interesting times ahead.

PSP - 102,809
DSL - 72,895
Wii - 24,143
PS3 - 13,105
PS2 - 12,980
Xbox360 - 5,215

Market share this week

DSL vs PSP
41.49% vs 58.51%

Wii vs PS3 vs XBox 360
56.86% vs 30.86% vs 12.28%

Source: Media Create