Well, now I'm interested in all the sales stuff... so here ya go. It's off of IGN. Oh well.
GCN Japan Sales Update
Mario Party soars, Zelda stays afloat, and Xbox gets crushed.
January 09, 2003 - The Japanese market has proven itself to be one of the most fickle when it comes to videogames. With that in mind, we have been anticipating finding out how GameCube and its software performed in the heavily competitive year-end environment. Particularly, with the release of the biggest GameCube title yet -- The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker -- we expected to see a surge in software sales for the system.
According to the latest numbers (from December 23-29, 2002) from Dengeki, there is indeed a surge. Zelda has gone on to sell nearly 475,000 units since its debut on Dec. 13. It was the number seven selling title of the week. This has seemingly -- and oddly -- caused a spike in Mario Party 4 sales, which outsold Zelda by 20,000 units, making for a grand total of 625,000 sold, and also placing it as the number four seller. Furthermore, Super Smash Bros. Melee has reappeared in the Top 50 after many months in hiatus, selling 7,900 copies and a grand total of roughly 1,130,000.
In fact, every GameCube title in the Top 50, except for Sonic Mega Collection, which dropped down from 33 to 37 with 12,000 sales for the week ( 24,000 total), and Zelda, which dropped from sixth place, jumped up several spots due to the year-end activity.
There are a few observations to be made. Mario Party 4 released earlier than Legend of Zelda, which explains how it can outsell Zelda in total; however, it is very strange for the title to outsell what is one of Nintendo's most famous franchises in weekly sales. Meanwhile, interest in Resident Evil 0 seems faint, as it was third best-selling GCN title, but still 22 in the Top 50. Interestingly, From TV Animation One Piece: Treasure Battle accumulated around 17,000 sales for the week, while Resident Evil 0 barely outperformed it with 18,500 copies sold.
However, Nintendo has still been safely topping the charts with Pokemon: Sapphire and Ruby for GBA, which have sold roughly 3.6 million units combined since release, according to magazine publisher Enterbrain.
As far as hardware sales are concerned, 240,000 GameCubes were sold over the month of December, Enterbrain reports. By comparison, the Xbox sold a mere 30,000. Meanwhile, PlayStation 2 easily outperformed both and pushed a total of 940,000 pieces of hardware into consumers' hands over the months of November and December.
In conclusion, while it does appear that Zelda and GameCube's overall strong software lineup for the year-end have been cause for renewed interest in the console, sales are still in a slump. According to Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, all videogame companies are enduring similar slumps.
As we roll into 2003, we'll be sure to bring you more data from overseas.
Edited by - Chupperson Weird on 1/9/2003 10:55:45 PM
