Software sales in Japan remained slow this week. Not a single game topped 50,000 units. Console software in particular was exceptionally low. It looks like once again no games for Wii or PS3 substantially topped 10,000 units for the week - a rare feat in prior years that has already happened in 2012 once, and should reoccur depressingly often throughout 2012.
1) Genso Suikoden: Tsumugareshi Hyakunen no Toki (PSP) - 40,000
3) Resident Evil: Revelations (3DS) - 32,000
3) Gravity Daze (Vita) - 32,000
4) Super Mario 3DLand (3DS) - 23,000
5) Mario Kart 7 (3DS) - 19,000
6) Monster Hunter Portable 3G (3DS) - 15,000
7) Armored Core 5 (PS3) - 10,000
9) Photokano (PSP) - 9,000
9) Ragnarok Odyssey (Vita) - 9,000
12) Monster Hunter Portable 3 (PSP) - 8,000
12) Just Dance Wii (Wii) - 8,000
12) Gran Turismo 5 Special (PS3) - 8,000
15) Slime MoriMori Dragon Quest 3: Taikaizoku to Shippo Dan (3DS) - 7,000
15) Soul Calibur V (PS3) - 7,000
15) Dragon Age II (PS3) - 7,000
In addition to the games above, Wii Party (Wii), Wii Sports Resort (Wii), Inazuma Eleven Go Shine / Dark (3DS), Tales of Innocence R (Vita), and Rhythm Thief (3DS) should all chart in the final top 20 data for the week.
Software sales remain very low in Japan. Not much is coming in the near term either. The occassional top seller will break 100,000 units sold week one over the next few weeks and months, but there just isn't anything major to juice the market in a major way for what looks like weeks or months. At some point, Dragon Quest X preorders should begin but Square-Enix may be choosing to launch that game in late 2012 to coincide with both the Wii holiday bump and the Wii U launch. An early release of Dragon Quest X would certainly push hardware and cover up for a lot of the weak early 2012 software data.
One of the problems with software sales in 2012 is that most of the platforms can no longer support games that rack up huge software sales - either long-selling games or games that perform very initially and then drop very quickly. The audience that buys long selling games is still split between DS, 3DS and to some extent Wii, while the audience that supports super openings is split between PSP, PS3, and to some extent Vita - although Vita has yet to see any successful software really.
The other problem is that older hardware is largely seeing only safe software releases, sequels essentially, which don't drive hardware making it more difficult to sell games to new users. The new users are important, as the older users tend to buy less and less software with time as they grow bored with the platform. 3DS has some resistance to the current issues of the Japanese market, as it is a new(ish) platform with a respectable base, and both the long-sellers and 'huge opening' games are starting to work on the platform. The issue is the 3DS is still riding on a fairly thin number of mega-hits and so the breadth of what works on the platform isn't ideal yet for most publishers. As the other software markets continue to collapse though and 3DS continues to grow, more and more content should move to 3DS as it will be the safest and least flawed platform on the market in Japan.