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GameCube (Games) PlayStation (Games) Entertainment Games

Japan Half-Year Sales Show Sony Domination 26

Thanks to Polygon for posting the Japanese games industry's half-year console hardware and software stats on their site. They summarize: "Sales of Sony's PlayStation 2 console significantly outpaced all competitors... surprisingly, Square-Enix topped all software publishers by a large margin." As far as Japanese hardware sales go, the GameCube (8.3 percent) and especially Xbox (1.6 percent) are falling ever-further behind the Playstation 2 (58.5 percent.) Regarding software, Square Enix may not have expected Final Fantasy X-2 to sell almost 2 million copies, but it only boosted their already top-selling Japanese output. Nintendo's second place in software may be more due to their handheld output, not including (?) the separately-listed and top-selling Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire for GBA, rather than their GameCube titles (though some GC titles like Animal Crossing have been surprise hits.)
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Japan Half-Year Sales Show Sony Domination

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  • by Mike Hawk ( 687615 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @06:19PM (#6403999) Journal
    I notice Pokemon has a seperate listing in the software category. Is that 1.44 million already included in Nintendo's 3.15 total above? If so, that would seem to show a weakness in Nintendo's lineup outside of Pokemon. If not then all is as expected with Nintendo taking the top spot with a total of 4.59 million.

    I'm not familiar with how Japanese totals are reported, I just found that listing interesting.
  • that have a chance of pulling Nintendo out of the hole in the console market? Off the top of my head the only one i can thinks of is the upcoming Namco Tales RPG, although i don't keep up on the Japanese side of things as much i would like. Maybe some RPGs combined with leverage from the GameBoy Player will help them out.
    • Mario Kart, I think, could be a big hit for them, especially with the inclusion of the ability to hook two gamecubes together and play with 8 players on two screens. I know I'll be buying that. I love Mario Tennis, and they've had plans for a cube version of that, when it comes out it should sell well, though I doubt anyone besides me would be buying a cube just for it. Hed.
      • by Anonymous Coward
        Yep, either Mario Kart, or perhaps Viewtiful Joe (assuming they fix some of the design "bugs" in the Japanese release). However, I don't know how many people will be playing 8-player Mario Karn when THE FARKING BROADBAND ADAPTER IS IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND IN THIS COUNTRY.
    • Maybe some RPGs combined with leverage from the GameBoy Player will help them out.

      Four words. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles.

      • Heh, true, i'd entirely forgotten about that one, although i'm not sure if that's exactly a good sign :) From what little they had availble for play at E3 it seemed a lot like the Seiken Densetsu/Secret of Mana series. If they'd announced a Secret of Mana game and given me that, i would have thought it was great, but illogically, i didn't enjoy it very much because i was hoping for a Final Fantasy game.

        Hopefully either there's more to the game that was apparent at E3, or most people won't have their emoti

  • Nintendo vs. Sony (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CashCarSTAR ( 548853 ) on Thursday July 10, 2003 @07:36AM (#6406495)
    Nintendo, at this point will always be a bit-player in the console market. That is not necessarly a bad thing, it's just market reality.

    Nobody wants to compete with Nintendo's first party games. They so dominate the system (in reality they dominate all the systems for the most part). No 3rd party games, equals no broad support.

    Nintendo really is the Apple of the video game world business wise. Selling to a small group of people for a good profit.

    On the other hand, I think that the PS2 has it's lead just because it was the first in. More consoles sold=more games=more consoles sold. Sure the games don't look quite as nice, but it's still spectacular enough.

    It'll be interesting to see what happens for the next Generation. If Nintendo jumps on with a competitive All-in-one system, (GC 2, GC and GBA support) Quite frankly, they still could slug it out with Sony.
  • "...PSone - 3.7 percent
    Xbox - 1.6 percent..."

    BTW, those PSones with the attached LCD and speakers look pretty cool. Perfect for the backseat on a family road trip.

    I was also suprised to see a snap-on battery and LCD for the gamecube at Toys'R'Us, too. Although the advertised play time for the battery wasn't too impressive (it would need a 12V plug for cars).

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