This Week In Sales: The Golden Week Effect Fails To Impress

Period: The week of April 29th – May 5th (2013)

Top-seller: Tomodachi Collection: New Life – 208,814

Nintendo 3DS sales: 26,273 | Total sales: 8,266,796

Nintendo 3DS XL sales: 50,190 | Total sales: 3,082,884

PlayStation Vita sales: 22,051 | Total sales: 1,558,785

Wii U sales: 13,173 | Total sales: 909,247

<< Last week’s software sales chart

Last week in Japan was Golden Week, an annual week-long holiday during which sales of entertainment products usually see an increase across the board, videogames included. This year’s Golden Week was no different, but it was a little underwhelming compared to years past, as far as sales go.

On the software front, Nintendo’s Tomodachi Collection: New Life saw a 44% increase in sales, with nearly 209,000 copies sold. It was once again the best-selling game for the week, followed by Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon at #2 and Animal Crossing: New Leaf at #3. In addition to these games, a number of other popular 3DS titles from publishers like Capcom and Namco Bandai all received a boost in sales from Golden Week as well.

Things weren’t quite as rosy on the hardware front. The Nintendo 3DS was the best-selling system for the week as per usual, with Golden Week sales going up to over 76,000 without any new game releases during the week. An impressive figure, but not as good as Golden Week 2012, during which 3DS sold nearly 92,000 units.

While the 3DS continues to do well and has a promising line-up of future software, seeing the system unable to surpass last year’s Golden Week sales is a little disappointing, given that its current portfolio of games is far larger and more diverse than the same time last year. The timing of Monster Hunter 4 and Pokémon X/Y’s releases—both slated for this year—couldn’t be any more appropriate. Those two titles will provide the next significant expansion to the 3DS’ audience.

Meanwhile, both Wii U and PlayStation Vita posted disappointing Golden Week sales. Wii U sold a mere 13,000 units while Vita didn’t fare much better at 21,000 units. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, given the lack of exclusive, widely-appealing software for both systems, but all the same, it doesn’t paint a pretty picture of the hardware market in Japan at present, given that sales will drop across the board coming out of the holidays next week.

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

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