Japan: Wii Outperforms as Market Sags

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Japan: Wii Outperforms as Market Sags
While the computation of their Japanese sales for January did not include Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the Wii still did well with the continued success of Wii Fit, making it the fastest selling Wii game ever.
Posted by David Radd on Monday, February 18, 2008


Famitsu reported today that the overall market in January in Japan was down roughly 10 percent compared to last year. This is attributed to software sales, which were roughly 20 percent less compared to last year. Hardware sales were roughly flat year-on-year.

The Wii did particularly well during the month, having sold 480,000 hardware units. Wii Fit was the top selling title for the month, and has had the fastest-ever sales pace for a Wii game. All in all, Wii software occupied five out of the top 10 slots for January's sale's chart.

Among the other systems, the DS Lite continued to outperform the competition, with 579,000 units sold. The PSP hardware, also performed well, with a 70 percent gain compared to January 2007 with 400,000 units sold. Finally, the PS3 registered a year-over-year growth of 10 percent, up to 166,000 units sold.

Looking forward, Famitsu expects the charts to get a boost from Dairanto Smash Brothers X (known as Super Smash Bros. Brawl in the U.S.) and the PSP's Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G.