Software sales increased substantially this week on the release of two fairly big, but frontloaded games - Armored Core 5 for PS3 and X360, and Resident Evil: Revelations for 3DS. Tales of Innocence: R for Vita also charted in the preliminary data, although it will do little more than provide a tiny bump this week given how low the opening for the game was. The lift should be similar to the first Resident Evil bump for 3DS in June 2011, which pushed 3DS to 27,000 from 23,000 on a 60,000 opening.
1) Armored Core 5 (PS3) - 195,000
2) Resident Evil: Revelations (3DS) - 160,000
3) Tales of Innocence: R (Vita) - 51,000
4) Armored Core 5 (X360) - 35,000
5) Monster Hunter Portable 3G (3DS) - 26,000
6) Mario Kart 7 (3DS) - 21,000
7) Super Mario 3D Land (3DS) - 20,000
9) Rhythm Kaitou R: Koutei Napoleon no Isan (3DS) - 10,000
9) Inazuma Eleven Go Shine / Dark (3DS) - 10,000
10) Final Fantasy XIII-2 (PS3) - 9,000
12) Just Dance Wii (Wii) - 8,000
12) Monster Hunter Portable 3 (PSP) - 8,000
13) Go Vacation (Wii) - 6,000
15) Kirby's Return to Dreamland (Wii) - 5,000
15) Musou Orochi 2 (PS3) - 5,000
In addition to the games above, Wii Sports Resort (Wii), Wii Party (Wii), Wii Sports Resort (Wii), Danball Senki (PSP), and Nintendogs + Cats (3DS) should be in the final top 20 data for the week.
Armored Core opened well on PS3 and X360 this week, but the series typically declines pretty quickly in week two, so whatever push X360 hardware (and possibly PS3 hardware) gets this week will be just for this week. The same goes for Vita with Tales - Tales games typically decline very quickly. The Tales of Xillia pattern was 525k-->50k-->20k in three weeks for the PS3 game. What Vita really needs is a breakout hit to sell for a long time like Monster Hunter or Wii Sports did, pushing a bit of hardware each week allowing publishers to experiment with software in a healthier hardware environment. There remains no evidence that such a hit is anywhere near arriving for Vita though.
Resident Evil is typically fairly front loaded as well, but should plateau at a higher level than Armored Core and push hardware for say, up to two weeks instead of up to one week. Capcom and Level 5 have proven rather well now that there is a sizable (read: profitable) 3DS core audience in Japan - Monster Hunter, Inazuma Eleven, Layton, and Resident Evil all work on the platform. The question going forward is what else works - we should see a lot of experimentation with that this year by various publishers. Nintendo also claimed at its earnings briefing that 3DS will have a lot of strong software coming because 3DS sold well after the price cut, so 2012 now looks rather bright for 3DS in Japan.
Outside the new releases, the Japanese industry remained very quiet, with only 3DS seeing games released before this week still selling over 10,000 units. Hardware sales nonetheless should remain excellent compared to early 2011, as combined pre-3DS hardware was only selling around 100,000 units at this point in 2011, while total hardware should reach at least 130,000 units this week, with 160,000 or more not out of the question. 3DS certainly looks like it will clear 5m units in February, within a year of its 2011 launch, which is impressive. PSP is now trending a fair bit ahead of Vita in an aligned launch in Japan (~535,000 in 7 weeks for Vita, 5 for PSP), but once more games start arriving, the gap should close a bit.
NCC 生化危机0 190,394(累计400,750)
NGC 生化危机 119,019(累计267,470)
NGC 生化危机4 145,533(累计220,799)
NGC 生化危机2 9,372(累计 9,372)
NGC 生化危机3 8,691(累计 8,691)
NGC 生化危机 维罗妮卡完全版 5,240(累计 5,240)