This Week In Sales: Parties, Friends And Paint Brushes

Even with no new releases in the top-ten, and fewer releases overall due to the Obon festival, this week’s sales chart is interesting from the perspective that a number of select (read: Nintendo) titles got a rather significant bump from their previous week’s performance.

Wii Party, for instance, sold 1.5 times more units than its previous week, while games like Art Academy and Tomodachi Collection shot back into the top-ten after hovering around for a bit near the #20 spot.

Once again, it would appear that titles with relatively longer tails tend to demonstrate how strong word of mouth (and consequently demand) for them really is best during busy shopping periods and when a lack of new releases drives consumers to fall back on older ones. We’ve seen this phenomenon at least once before during Golden Week.

The top-ten for the week of August 9th – 15th is as follows:

On Nintendo’s Art Academy:

Looking at Art Academy’s stubborn staying power since release, there’s something that bears mentioning at this point. Art Academy isn’t a Nintendo title produced in Japan. It was developed by Headstrong Games — AKA Kuju Entertainment — who developed The House of the Dead: Overkill and Battalion Wars 2.

At a recent investor event, Nintendo president, Satoru Iwata, singled out Art Academy as another key title for the Nintendo DS that would help attract new audiences. “We are now promoting and selling Art Academy for Nintendo DS, though we have not sold many yet,” Iwata told his investors in July.

He continued: “This software teaches users who are not good at drawing, and advises them to, ‘Please just try to draw according to the instructions, and you’ll find that you’ve drawn a surprisingly impressive picture.’ Customer satisfaction for this software is generally high. If we could spread these kinds of products, we would be able to create a new market. We think it is very important for Nintendo to discover and propose these themes regularly.”