This Week In Sales: PlayStation Vita Price Cut And Dynasty Warriors 8

Period: The week of February 25th – March 3rd (2013)

Top-seller: Dynasty Warriors 8 – 203,224

Nintendo 3DS sales: 27,174 | Total sales: 8,055,697

Nintendo 3DS XL sales: 50,265 | Total sales: 2,708,598

PlayStation Vita sales: 62,543 | Total sales: 1,294,407

Wii U sales: 10,021 | Total sales: 801,027

<< Last week’s software sales chart

Last week was a busy one for game releases in Japan. Tecmo Koei released Dynasty Warriors 8, which led the software sales charts with 203,224 copies sold in its first week on store shelves. Behind it at #2 was another new release, Professor Layton and the Azran Legacies, supposedly Layton’s final adventure, with 130,686 copies sold.

At #3 was Senran Kagura: Shinovi Versus, a spin-off of Marvelous AQL’s Senran Kagura series of games starring factions of female ninjas engaged in war with one other. At retail, Shinovi Versus sold 94,324 copies, but earlier in the week, Marvelous reported that total sales—including download sales—are at 120,000.

Senran Kagura: Shinovi Versus released in tandem with a price cut on Sony’s PlayStation Vita device. The price cut, which reduced the system’s price from 25,000 yen to 20,000 yen, spurred Vita sales for the week, moving 62,543 Vita devices. Sony are hoping to keep momentum up with the release of Soul Sacrifice, a multiplayer action game, this week.

Also released last week was the PlayStation Vita version of Phantasy Star Online 2. While the online multiplayer game is both free to download and play, Sega also released a retail version with added in-game benefits that people could buy. The retail version sold 61,227 copies, although downloads were obviously likely much higher.

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

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