Nintendo DS Tops Japanese 2005 Sales

17 January 2006

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Posted by:Josh

Looks like Nintendo made out like a bandit with Japanese consumers in 2005. Sales figures for the Japanese game industry in 2005 have been announced, and Nintendo simply dominated like a rampaging Charizard (yes, I am clever).

Believe it or not, Japan’s top-selling 2005 title was actually released in November! Animal Crossing: Wild Word for the Nintendo DS sold almost 1.17 million copies and caused a surge in sales of the DS system upon it’s release. Five of the top 10 selling games were on the DS, while the PS2 filled in the other slots.

Here is the list:
1. Animal Crossing: Wild World for the DS
2. Gran Turismo 4 for the PS2
3. Nou wo Kitaeru Otona no DS Training for the DS
4. Nintendogs for the DS
5. World Soccer Winning Eleven 9 for the PS2
6. Dynasty Warriors 5 for the PS2
7. Yawaraka Atama Juku for the DS
8. Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop for the DS
9. Kingdom Hearts II for the PS2
10. Mario Kart DS for the DS

Gran Turismo 4 for the PS2 came in second with sales of 1.07 million units, while Nintendo’s brain-training game for middle-age and senior consumers, “Nou wo Kitaeru Otona no DS Training,” ranked in third place with 1.01 million copies sold.

The top-selling Game Boy Advance title was Kouchuu Ouja: Mushi King, which ranked in 12th place, while Mario Party 7 was the GameCube’s best seller, landing in 31st place. Sony’s PSP had a somewhat disappointing showing in the sales charts, with its best showing coming from Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee, which was the 40th top-selling game in Japan for 2005. No Xbox or Xbox 360 game ranked in the top 100.

Japan saw 1,084 new games in 2005, which sold a combined 55.43 million units. The sales figure is slightly lower than the 58.51 million game units sold in the country back in 2004, but major releases like last year’s Dragon Quest VIII for the PS2 made 2004 a tough year to match.

Nintendo was far and away the top-selling developer and publisher. They sold 11.03 million units of software NOT including Pokemon sales (which are published by The Pokemon Company, a Nintendo subsidiary), add Pokemon titles and the companies sales figures to up a couple mil to 13.32 million.

Nintendo also had more titles in the top 100 than any other publisher. More than a quarter of the list was put out by Nintendo, with 26 of its titles ranked in the top 100 (19 when excluding Pokemon games), meaning that more than a quarter of the top-selling games in 2005 were from the company.

Even without the Pokemon titles, Nintendo sold almost twice as many games as its next-closest competitor, Bandai. Konami, Sony Computer Entertainment, and Square Enix rounded out the top five publishers.

As far as hardware goes, the Nintendo DS was far and away the best-selling system, moving more than 4 million units throughout the year. Despite its unimpressive software showing, the PSP was the second-best selling system with almost 2.23 million sold, followed by the PS2 (2.13 million), Game Boy Advance SP (831,221), Game Boy Micro (394,845), GameCube (305,000), Xbox 360 (81,770), Game Boy Advance (28,945), and, finally, the Xbox (13,186).

Famitsu’s figures are based on sales from December 27, 2004 through December 25, 2005.

And all this begs the question . . . . what would the video game world look like without Nintendo? It also comes as news to anyone who still believes that Nintendo can’t compete with Microsoft or Sony, with sales this high in the land of the rising sun, it proves once again that Nintendo isn’t going anywhere for a long time to come.