This Week In Sales: Everything Sold Badly

Period: The week of May 6th – May 12th (2013)

Top-seller: Tomodachi Collection: New Life – 103,479

Nintendo 3DS sales: 16,412 | Total sales: 8,283,208

Nintendo 3DS XL sales: 33,351 | Total sales: 3,116,235

PlayStation Vita sales: 12,331 | Total sales: 1,571,116

Wii U sales: 7,974 | Total sales: 917,221

<< Last week’s software sales chart

This year’s Golden Week holiday was rather unimpressive in Japan, with the Nintendo 3DS being the only videogame console to benefit from the week-long holiday in terms of sales. Last week, which was the week following Golden Week, was even worse.

Typically, sales across the board—including both hardware and software—drop the week after a major holiday like Golden Week. While the 3DS managed to sell another 50,000 units for the week, the Wii U dropped to an alarmingly low 8,000 units. Meanwhile, the PlayStation Vita dropped back down to 12,000 units, marking the end of the short-lived boost it enjoyed as a result of its recent price cut and software releases.

Namco Bandai and Nintendo were, once again, the top publishers for the week, filling up the majority of the top-20 software sales chart.

Thankfully, the Summer ahead looks to be more exciting. May 23rd will see the release of Shin Megami Tensei IV and Kamen Rader: Battride War, which should make for some interesting discussion in the weeks following their release. Soon after, we’ll see Square Enix’s mecha 3DS RPG, Gyrozetter, followed by Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies and Youkai Watch in July.

The top-20 chart for the week was as follows:

Sales data acquired from 4Gamer, Media Create and Geimin.net.