Japanese hardware sales, 26 June - 2 July: You've got red on you

Of course the lite and ds old style still suffer from massive shortages. When new colors hit expect more people to buy them. Hell even second hand they go for the price of silver per gram in Japan. Or some other precious metal.

Sony made the poor choice of using UMDs and Memory Stick Pro Duos..If they would've just sticked to making a video game device and not a multimedia machine with poor video and audio capabilities.
That said, I still plan on getting one any day now, if for about 2 or 3 games.

this just in:
every single 360 sale was somebody for the US importing one so that they could play the japanese games for points!

im on my 2nd gamecube, 2nd PS2 and my first xbox broke but a year till the 360 came out so there was no use in buying it again, i did go through 4 ps1s though incidentally the gamecube was the first to bite the dust.... how very ODD

"24. Wow. DS seriously sells 150,000 units a WEEK? Thats crazy. By now half the population of Japan should have one. Thats includes everybody. Women, children, old people, perverts and thieves."
-My1stBorn4aPS3

Well I know you didnt mean literally, but it made me wonder...hmm... what percent of the Japanese population own a DS lite? I would count the normal DS but that could take me a very, very long time. So I found sales charts for each week since the ds lite launch and did some number crunching, here are the results...

Nintendo DS lite sales in Japan only
(numbers in parenthesis are accumulated sales)

released March 2, 2006

March 2 – March 5: 68,438

March 6 – March 12: 89,790 (158,228)

March 13 – March 19: 104,452 (262,680)

March 20 – March 26: 119,986 (382,666)

March 27 – April 2: 149,371 (532,037)

April 3 – April 9: 154,731 (686,768)

April 10 – April 16: 140,969 (827,737)

April 17 – April 23: 168,809 (996,546)

April 24 – April 30: 225,835 (1,222,381)

May 1 – May 7: 161,010 (1,383,391)

May 8 – May 14: 91,895 (1,475,286)

May 15 – May 21: 160,182 (1,635,468)

May 22 – May 28: 285,025 (1,920,493)

May 29 – June 4: 135,614 (2,056,107)

June 5 – June 11: 132,027 (2,188,134)

June 12 – June 18: 141,487 (2,329,621)

June 19 – June 25: 157,022 (2,486,643)

June 26 – July 2: 153,566 (2,640,209)

So 2,640,209 DS lites have been sold in Japan as of July 2, 2006. The population of Japan is 127.69 million appoximately, according to http://www.stat.go.jp/English/data/handbook/c02cont.htm

Also, according to wikipedia, 6.6 million original DS systems have been sold. Below it, it says 2,700,000 DS lites had been sold appoximately, that would have been nice to know earlier. Oh well, now lets see what we can find out from these numbers.

DS- 6,600,000
DS lite- 2,640,209
Total DSes- 9,240,209
Japanese population- 127,690,000

percent of Japanese who bought DS- 5.16%
percent of Japanese who bought DS lite- 2.06%
percent of Japanese who bought either/both DS- 7.23%

So in conclusion, about 7.23% of the Japanese population owns a Nintendo DS. Not quite half, but it is pretty good, and will double with Final Fantasy 3 coming out. I mean who wouldn't want to buy a remake of an old game that has about ten sequals to it. I know i sure do.

Also you may be wandering Nintendo Phantom? What kind of name is that? Well, I grew up on Nintendo platforms so I've always been a big fan. Then theres the Infinium phantom which is oviously going to be the next-gen console winner. That and it gives me a cool ending line.

The Nintendo Phantom strikes again! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *cough* *cough* HAHAha...

Dear Mr. 42 (idiot eraser),
You stated in your correspondance that "Thing is psp games don't sale due to rampant piracy."
Poppycock, I say! Sheer lunacy! The Playstation Portable sells poorly because the games are crap! Having owned a console myself, I only purchased two games. Metal Gear Ac!d, and Lumines. Both enjoyable, by the way, but few other PSP games held a candle to them. And any that I did get excited for either suffered from heinous load times, or ended up being just bad ports of games I'd already played. When I did at last make use of an emulator, I rejoiced that I had, perhaps, not payed $250 for a movie player. Alas, constant firmware updates with almost no purpose but denying me my favorite SNES titles meant I had to choose between A) More crappy ports and games that are, on occasion, BARELY PLAYABLE (i'm looking at you, Generation of Chaos), or B) a large collection of old school games.

The PSP is a crap system. The UMD format does well for movies but it sucks for games. Want proof? Go into your local game store. Count the number of UMD movies vs. the number of PSP games. Ouch. That a lot of damn movies you probably already own on DVD.
To argue that we should feel ashamed of ourselves for trying to get our *$250!!* bucks worth out of the thing is laughable. Sony should spend less time trying to force consumers to buy into their proprietary media formats and more time worrying about making a quality product.

I find it incredible that the Japanese market is so well observed that one can track the sales of Xboxes down to two units sold last week.

The NES and the Famicom are the same thing. It's just the Famicom was released in JAP with a 60-pin connector while the NES was released abroad with a 72-pin connector.

The NES was released some years later however without a lot of the addons the Famicom received. A few Famicom games used the mic which was part of the second controller.

I want to know what all you people do to your systems...I've never had one bite the dust...and I've got everything from the Magnavox Odyseey up to the current gen, and everything in between.

The only system I ever had tank was my ps1. Three times in fact, and did not even play it that much. My PS2, xbox, gc, tg16, genesis, sega cd, snes, dreamcast, hell even 32x are all in working condition. My NES is still working great with a little cartridge manipulation and rubbing alcohol on the cartridge connectors. Super Mario/Duck Hunt/Track & Field combo cartridge FTW!!

I've had two systems ever fail on me: A Genesis I dropped a TV on and a Gameboy with melted batteries.

Otherwise, I keep my junk clean and off of the floor. Even my Sega Game Gear is still functional. My PS2, although never played, certainly still works. You people are, apparently, just filthy, lazy, or destructive. Probably all three.

Oh Come On!
Am I gonna have to be the one that says it?
Shaun of the Dead?
RED arrows?

"You got red on you."

Oh baby, Mal F4cti0n FTW!!

"Sony believes in planned obselance (sorry don't recall the spelling grammer nazis)..."

Heh... spelling is not part of grammar (and yes, it's spelled with two "a"s), it's its own language discipline, orthography. But both orthography and definition are under the purview of vocabulary.

At least, according to this Vocabulary Facist.

#15 Insomnia Bob
"A green arrow is nice...but if you're that far behind the competition when they have a slow week...well, it's kinda like competing in the special olympics.

No matter how hard you try, you're still retarded."

I think that comment was disgraceful and totaly inhumane.I suppose you could spit out nazi love and satan worship and still get away with it.Maybe that's how you scored your 2 stars...well done!

I know why people replace their PS2's.. its
"moooooooooooooooom" from South park, the 10-18 year olds part of the Sony gamers. Kids that don't know how to take care of their systems. Or perhaps its the product? Maybe a combination of both perhaps. My girlfriends brother is 13, he's on his 4th PS2. It breaks and he begs and begs till its replaced. Then when you are 19 instead of "moooooM" then its "son of a bitch I gotta buy another shitty ass PS2 to play ______" insert any game in there really. My friends are on their 2nd or 3rd PS2 as well. Still my original NES, SNES, N64, GC all work without doing anything. No blowing on the cartridges/discs or anything. My only real loss was my N64 memory card by a 3rd person company which cost me big. Lost some valuable data there. That's about it.

Sometime in 97, playing me some Final Fantasy 7, im right at the end and my Intec Craptronic Memory Card 1000 dies. One of the saddest moments of my gaming career.

I've also had my PS2 about 5 years with no problems. I don't know anyone in the real world who has a problem with their PS2 either.

My1stBorn4aPS3 (#24): "Wow. DS seriously sells 150,000 units a WEEK? Thats crazy. By now half the population of Japan should have one. Thats includes everybody. Women, children, old people, perverts and thieves. Nintendo has literally created a new market of people. Miyamoto is still printing out the moeny on his limited edition DS lite prolly due out at the beginning of next year. Wii will prolly do the same. Dont you see people in Japan, Nintendo is taking all your money!?! They are dominating the world yet everyoine views them as the underdog! Can't anyone else see what they are doing?! They have been running the game console market since NES days. Sony was NEVER on the top. Nintendo makes the most money and always has, yet people look at them and say 'aww you poor guys let me support you...' Nintendo don't need your support they already own half of your belongings! The heads of nintendo are laughing right now counting your money and will laugh again when Wii launches cuz everyone sees them as underdog. They laugh at you! My god does no one else see the Nintendo empire coming?!"
============================================

Hmhmhmhmhmhm. I've known about this for a long time.
Sony is actually a paper tiger. The only thing Nintendo lost in the 64/Gamecube was absolute dominance of the industry. They've reduced down to plurality/majority dominance of the industry.

I laugh when I think about it...about what you discovered about this underdog biz with Nintendo.
People fail to realize that they never stopped being the leader of the industry.

But anyone just taking a look can see quite easily. Every company that seemingly "beat" them — Sega, Sony, & "Microsoft" (even with 4 billion loss)— that they were like young Gohan with flashes of power but quickyl burnt out. Sega broke themselves just to compete with Nintendo. All that 32X/SegaCD/Saturn business was them doing their best to truly topple this giant. Sony on hype & 3rd party got the edge in marketshare on the homeconsole front but how much money are they getting from this "dominance" in comparison. The ratios don't match for someone who is supposed to be ruling the industry. Microsoft lost 4 billion just to get on the table. They have the flexibility to do that obviously backed by the world's richest man but the ones who contest Nintendo seem to lose when they "win".

Pyrrhic victories.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory

Nintendo's business model is airtight. They STARTED with handhelds with Game & Watch in 1980. They went into home consoles with the Famicom/NES 1983/1985 & made these sister reciprocal branches that feed each other &/or cover each other. Japan is a fast-paced movers' society that always on the go. That's why cell phone gaming is so big over there. So Nintendo's mastery of handheld is obvious. It spills over into console & console spills over into handheld. Franchises & audiences. They concentrate on REAL profit instead of hype so they always make sure they don't lose much more than they gain. And they spend their gains wisely.

The handheld is always a few technological steps behind the console so you get a situation where old generation gameplay lives on which REALLY helped out the SNES-reminiscent GBA.

Then they build onto their accomplishments & history the whole time. Making their products legendary & iconic. True stars. Wash rinse repeat. And innovate.
That's how they survived largely by first party alone these past two generations. Even Sega couldn't do that & you know Microsoft & Sony can't do that.

THEN they make sure to CATER to the younger market. What kind of fools DON'T consider children as a viable audience? These kids grow up with you & will most likely stay with you when you were a part of their good memories. But Nintendo not only keeps that family friendly edge but also reaches out to EVERYBODY.
This only makes more sales. Yeah let's get games Grandma might like. Yeah let's get games most girls would like. Yeah let's get games couples will like together. Genius. And let's keep putting out games the teens will like & the young males will like.
E for EVERYBODY.
Not just you or me but WE.

Because Nintendo lost some marketshare in some markets compared to the old days people look at them as a dying old man when that's far from true if you look at the facts.
When this Wii comes out they're gonna find out that that old man is full of experience.
And they will come to the same discovery you just did here.
And boy is that Wii gonna sell.

Remember this equation:
1st party + 2nd party + (return of) 3rd party = Nintendo's party.

John Lucas

John "Majority Stockholder" Lucas should anyone care that much about the profit-ability of any company? Do you cheer Exon-Mobil and British Petroleum wonderful profit margins as well? Or what about Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline?

To rip off a Red Stripe beer comercial- Yea Corporate Profits!!

Seriously this has got to be some kind of sickness.

I love how whenever people discuss broken PS2/360's on these boards, there's always the crowd that chalks it all up to people abusing their systems.

An anecdote: My stepdad is on his third PS2, and he's not 14 years old, a fratboy, or even a drunken moron. His systems always sit on an otherwise empty shelf with a minimum 12" space on all sides and 7-8" above - in my estimation a fairly reasonable spot. And yet they still break.

My point is that the fact that your hardware hasn't broken (yet) doesn't mean that they aren't prone to breaking. Conversely, the fact that my stepdad is on his third PS2 doesn't mean that they are all faulty (although I would argue that it's more compelling than the first argument) - it's possible that he just has bad luck. Assuming, however, that the only reason consoles break is because people are idiots is naive, and is more a commentary on people attempting to give their respective self-esteems a boost by looking down their noses at the masses than it is on the issue at hand.

2 OG Xboxes... lol sauce... and the old GBA beat it out with a stunning 8... 4x more than the xbox. Hilarious.

Bored (Msg #71): "John "Majority Stockholder" Lucas should anyone care that much about the profit-ability of any company? Do you cheer Exon-Mobil and British Petroleum wonderful profit margins as well? Or what about Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline?

To rip off a Red Stripe beer comercial- Yea Corporate Profits!!

Seriously this has got to be some kind of sickness."

Ain't nobody majority stockholding Nintendo. As the rumor goes, ask Bill Gates.

There's a difference with this analogy you're a making.

*Nintendo ain't gouging nobody to make their profits. *Their products are not necessities in modern living like gasoline is. (it's more than just cars. how are you gonna get the goods you need without trucks, trains, planes & boats? keeps the economy going)
*They commit to giving you a lot of entertain value for an affordable price. $200 for each system they've made DESPITE inflation???
*Their products bring a lot of joy & happiness into the world.
*And what they make is good. Quality.

*And as long as they make profit, they stay in business.
*As long as they stay in business, they continue making these affordable quality diversions.
*As long as they continue making these affordable quality diversions, they continue to make people happy.

When you do good work, you should be applauded.
Nintendo does good work & that's why some people care that they do good in business.
It's more than about the money. If it was, that much care wouldn't go into what they make.

But no I don't throw parties about a company making money. I was just stating fact is all. :-)
And CERTAINLY not for those other companies.
John Lucas