Japanese hardware sales, January 26 – February 1

Seems over for consoles.

8,107. How embarrassing

I don’t think anyone’s got much to crow about, man. Even the Wii’s gone down the shitter.

Yep. All a bit slow. They need to find another 50 million Japanese people to sell a DS to. Then everything’d be fine.

Pat, do they actually need to find another 50 million Japanese people? They can just release a new and improved (?) version of the DS (ooh, look how sexy the DSi is) and *bang* their first 50 million will probably buy that as well.

Well done everyone – mission accomplished!

You may well be right

“Seems over for consoles.”

Those figures are horribly low for all the machines. Kinda depressing to look at, to be honest.

It is kind of the ‘calm after the storm’, though – January is always very slow in Japan after the New Year rush. It’ll pick up before long, once some big-name software actually starts appearing. Not long now until Star Ocean 4, for a start.

The Wii could well be a worry for Nintendo in Japan, though. While it’s still outselling PS3 it’s by a lower and lower amount each week, and third-party releases are really struggling (odd, as Japan has far superior third-party Wii support than the west). Look at the comparative figures this week for the Wii version of Echoes of Time and the DS game. Granted, that’s partly down to the graphics (the Wii version is essentially the DS game upscaled, so it’s hardly surprising it sold poorly) but even so, I imagine Square-Enix expected better.

I’m surprised Atlus doesn’t knock out a few Wii ports for a quick buck considering that RPGs (particularly from popular series) still do quite well (though handhelds seem to be the new home for that genre – or indeed, most genres). Port some of the PS2 SMT titles, add pointer controls for menus and I’m sure the games would make their money back.

Maybe the accusations of “fad” weren’t completely without merit. Although as has been said, nobody will be popping open the champagne over that result.

I actually think 360 is doing OK.

It’s certainly doing much better than it was. It’s ‘natural rest’ state is several thousand units a week higher than it used to be.

Wii is really struggling over there right now (in comparison to how it was doing). They should probably release some new colours or something like that.

Saying that, sales seem to be decreased for all the consoles… not a good start to the year at all.