During the end-of-year holiday period in Japan, videogame software sales amounted to 10.854 million units, reports Japanese sales tracker Media Create. All said and done, software sales were nearly identical to the same period the year prior—100.36% of 2013.
The relatively healthy software sales can be attributed primarily to the Nintendo 3DS, whose library contains popular games such as Yo-kai Watch 2 (2.447 million across all three versions) and Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire (2.591 million copies sold across two versions if the double pack was counted as two copies per one unit).
To put that in perspective, Yo-kai Watch 2 and Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire accounted for nearly 45% of total Japanese software sales during the end-of-year holiday period.
Aside from the Nintendo 3DS, the Wii U was the only platform that saw an increase in software sales. In the case of Wii U, software sales were 112.95% of 2013. Unfortunately, Wii U software didn’t make up for the decrease in Wii software sales, and during Christmas week PlayStation software dropped to 41.30% of 2013, so ultimately it can be said that the 3DS was the only healthy platform in Japan during the end-of-year season.
Meanwhile, total hardware sales during the end-of-year season came to 1.74 million units. Unlike software sales, hardware decreased to 83.42% of the same period from 2013. Even the Nintendo 3DS decreased slightly to 93.96% of 2013, owing to the fact that most of its popular software sold to existing 3DS owners rather than new buyers.
Note: To calculate end-of-year sales, Media Create tracked the seven weeks from November 17th, 2014 – January 4th, 2015. All data above pertains to this period unless otherwise specified.
