Japan's software sales figures have an elder statesman in Animal Crossing: New Leaf. Despite hitting the Japanese market in November of last year, the 3DS iteration of the series the locals call "Dobutsu no Mori" is still charting extremely well. True, it's not putting up the chart-dominating numbers that it was for the first few months of its run, but it's still hanging around, watching newer games from all genres and publishers leave the rankings just as quickly as they came.
Gundam is as big as ever in its home land, with Gundam Breaker coming out to take the title of June's best seller, despite only being released on the 27th.
Naughty Dog also has a success story on its hands, as The Last of Us debuted to great sales in the middle of the month. It trailed behind the Japanese figures for Uncharted 3 by a mere 5,000 units, which I would say is quite good news; after all, established franchises usually do better than brand new IPs making their first trips to market.
Here are the estimated sales figures for the 20 best-selling games in Japan, for the month of June:
(PS3) Gundam Breaker – 200,564
(3DS) Friend Collection: New Life – 187,689
(3DS) Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D – 174,541
(PS3) The Last of Us – 149,937
(PSV) Toukiden – 122,794
(3DS) Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millenium Girl – 88,278
(PSP) Toukiden – 66,016
(3DS) Luigi's Mansion 2: 64,077
(3DS) Animal Crossing: New Leaf – 61,971
(PS3) Atelier Escha & Logy: The Alchemist of Empty Twilight – 57,550
(PS3) Resident Evil Revelations: 48,392
(3DS) Shin Megami Tensei IV: 43,581
(PS3) Kamen Rider: Battride War: 36,977
(3DS) Digimon World Re:Digitize Decode – 34,350
(PSV) Hyperdimension Idol Neptunia PP – 32,100
(PS3) Terraria – 27,879
(3DS) Chousoku Henkei Gyrozetter: Albatross no Tsubasa – 23,500
(PS3) Date A Live: Rine Utopia – 23,340
(3DS) Dragon Ball Heroes: Ultimate Mission – 18,000
(PSV) Vallhalla Knights 3 – 17,000
Hardware looks about like one would expect, with 3DS more than doubling the second-place contender. Toukiden proved to be a big hardware mover for Vita, bumping its sales from 13,000 one week to well over 30,000 the next. The real size and impact of that bump will be seen in the weeks to come, however. The Vita now enters another four-week span with no new releases. (Vita's most recent games shipped out on June 27; its next games will hit stores on July 25.) The system needs something with serious legs to keep it rolling and keep it in the public eye for more than a week or two at a time.
3DS – 158,000
Vita – 74,100
PS3 – 50,432
WiiU – 25,995
PSP – 25,776
It will be interesting to see what impact the upcoming multiplatform Dragon's Crown has on both the gray-haired PS3 and the asthmatic Vita. The numbers above show that handhelds are Japan's true love, but will people pay an extra $200+ to play Dragon's Crown on a handheld instead of a system they might already own? My money says their software sales end up being pretty close to each other, while the Vita puts up hardware numbers around 30,000 or so during DC's release week. This boost will probably come at the end of a sluggish July, however.
Wii-U will stumble and trip over itself yet again, though it will see a rise in the middle of the month, with some new bundles shipping out, plus the releases of New Super Luigi U and Pikmin 3. The weeks that follow only give Nintendo's newest console Sniper Elite V2 and Lego City Adventures, which can only do so much.
The 3DS is likely to keep the hardware lead in July, the only question will be the margin of victory. It has game releases flowing, but few of them are the heavy hitters that it's been busting out to this point. Exceptions are a new Tiny Battlers game and Mario & Luigi RPG 4 (called Dream Team internationally), which arrive on the 18th.
