Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Nintendo DS dominates Japanese charts

Although there is no analyst input on this post from Joystiq, I thought the numbers spoke for themselves. Not only is Nintendo kicking butt selling out DS handhelds, but according to Joystiq, "Japanese sales information for the week beginning December 26 indicate that Nintendo's DS is on a sales rampage! Occupying 8 of the top 10 spots, including the top three, DS titles are selling like crazy." Here are the top 10 selling video games in Japan for that period:

# FORMAT TITLE
1 DS Brain Training 2
2 DS Animal Crossing: Wild World
3 DS Mario Kart DS
4 PS2 Kingdom Hearts II
5 DS DS Training For Adults: Work Your Brain (Brain Training)
6 PS2 Front Mission 5: Scars of the War
7 DS Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time
8 DS Gentle Brain Exercises
9 DS Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop!
10 DS Pokemon Mysterious Dungeon: Blue Rescue Force

Notice anything missing? Oh yeah, there are no Sony PSP games on the list. This frankly can't be a good sign back in the home country. As one of the commenters at Joystiq noted, this shows that Games do matter over cool features and functions.

On a more personal level, after a little more than one week, my 8 year old daughter is still going strong with her new DS. She has two games - Nintendogs and Animal Crossing: Wild World - and both are getting a lot of play. I've never seen her like this. It makes me believe more strongly than ever that girls are a woefully underserved but potentiall very big market when it comes to video games...