In a gaming year dominated by talk of sex and violence, the best-selling game in Japan (the heart of the gaming world to many) was a bug-collecting, letter-writing, flower-watering collection of menial tasks.
According to the latest Famitsu, the November release of Animal Crossing: Wild World led Nintendo's DS siege of the Japanese sales charts, selling almost 1.17 million copies and taking the title of Japan's best-selling game of 2005. It had plenty of company from other DS games in the top 10, as the handheld managed to place five other titles on the list, with PlayStation 2 titles claiming the remaining four spots.
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 following is the list of the 10 best-selling games in Japan for 2005:
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
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 moved the most games of any publisher on the chart by a long shot, selling 11.03 million units in 2005. That figure doesn't even include Pokemon games, which are published by Nintendo subsidiary The Pokemon Company in Japan. When they're added, Nintendo's sales jolt to 13.32 million units. 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.
Discussion
Nintendo, is doing so well!! The Nintendo DS is doing so well .. even in the US... The gamecube sales is what sucks but at least Nintendo is seeing a strong future .. :)
Nintendo is doing Great and the Revolution will do just as good so be prepared sony oh and SCREW XBox360 and all its gayness execpt DOA and Ninja Gaiden
Nintendo rocks! we take over ALL the chart in japan. I wanna live there rather than this rock they call great britain.
Xbox fans start moaning in 3...2...what? They've already started? Poor Xbox fans...it's not their fault the 360 has (so far) been a pile of so much rubbish, with rubbish games.
i wanna move to japan
Omg i cant believe i missed this... "Famitsu's figures are based on sales from December 27, 2004 through December 25, 2005." If this is true,... during these few months those ds developers musta struck rich
Japanese sucess means japanese developers like Square\Capcom\SEGA support it which also translates into western sales. Games like Final Fantasy and Sonic are still pretty popular in the west as well.
"No Xbox or Xbox 360 game ranked in the top 100." Man, Japan sounds like heaven...
Nintendo all the WAY!!!!!!!!!!
i agree with 777rak GO NINTENDO THEY RULE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
hmmmm..........there has only been one PSP game that sold over a million. NOW ISNT THAT SAD!!? DS HAS 5!!!!!
Congratulations Nintendo, apparently innovation, creativity and fun are still important somewhere in this world.
thats funny... neat funny
Nintendo started the gaming business and they should get to rule it too.
between the PSP (don't get me wrong, I love my PS2, I just hated the PSP) and the Xbox (I loathe microsoft in it's intirety) I'm one happy nintedo fanboy!
Ha! That'll teach sony to try and take away Nintendo's handheld spotlight.
Damn Right. Nintendo PWNS.
YonSon...say hello to Twilight Princess ;)
oh, and if any one at nintendo reads this make some f'ing GOOD games 4 the game cube like back when the N64 was out! :)
microsoft will fail to bad Xbox 360 your unnessary 3 proceesors will be ure doom
Basically....when Metroid Prime Hunters comes out, PSP will be in one massive pile of steaming sony crap. Suck on that!
congrats, Nintendo. I applaud your work, although i;ve never doubted them (I got my DS on launch date). Let's hope Metroid Prime: Hunters makes the list for 2006!
Innovation Sells. Nintendo 100%
I think it's just great that the DS is finally starting to come to the plate, and with new games like Animal Crossing DS, Mario Kart DS, and Advance Wars...we now have a reason to choose Nintendo over Sony once again. Nintendo is all about great, unique hardware and theres no doubting the have the best overall games for the majority of consumers. Good work Nintendo, and the next step I think is too release some more N64 Classics...this would be alot better though if they still had RARE!
DS ROCKS!!!
[This message was deleted at the request of the original poster]
the big N owns!!!!
its a great system it should sell got my ds about 8 months ago truth is i play more games on it then my psp all i do is watch a movie if im going somewhere
Boy do I love Nintendo.
PSP dose not have has many games, there's like 4 good ones. But it is clearly the better one, better graphics, watch movies, plays mor M and T games, and holds photos, Internet, and of course plays music.
This is really good for Nintendo. The DS really does wel in Japan. I hope this gives some sort of speculation about the upcoming Revolution. But still you can't just only sell well in Japan, there still is the U.S. and Europe Take the Xbox(not 360) for example: It sells almost terrible in Japan, but in Europe it does extremely well and also in the U.S.
Alunanite well said. I don't know why these people are saying it's doing bad in the US.
Uh you guys that keep saying "Now only if they could do as well in the states/west" do know that the DS has outsold the PSP in every region except Korea right? The margin isn't as crushing as in Japan (where no new PSP games have been announced for Q3 of 2006 and beyond), but they in the last three months the DS has consistently outsold the PSP every week in the US. Furthermore, they are eight times further along in software sales. The PSP launch in March and strong sales through August caught it up to the DS, but it lost ground in Q4 of 2005, by close to half a million units.
Nintendo rules... flat out. Even though the sales may look bad in the US, their games are the best and their franchises are more well known than any other, their consoles are great and affordable and their handhelds are market leaders for all times. BRING ON THE REV!!!
nintendo is doing fine here i n the us as well. hello their the only ones who made profit off their console. and ds is doing better in us. since their is not many games for the psp.
Wow, the BigN owned Japan this year
PS2 kills xbox and xbox 1.5 together.... .....Imagine when PS3 launches!!
I second that. To everyone who says that they are japanese figures, the american and european figures will probably follow the same sort of trend. And I would like to point out that nintendo is a japanese company, so doing well in its own turf is actually a big deal. One things is for sure, this next generation of gaming is going to be ace for all of us!
Nintendo's philosphy: Bring in new blood to play games. Nintendo DS: 13.5 million units in one year and a craze in Japan. Now take that success and translate it to the Revolution this year. One only needs to do the math. 6 DS titles in the top ten. 4 PS2 games in the top ten. The highest ranking PSP title was at number 40. Xbox and Xbox 360 didn't crack the top 100. Keep it up Nintendo, and this should teach Sony a little bit about games and not: "Ohhh...we're like totally cool because we're Sony...look at the graphics..." I sound like a fanboy, but I'm not you guys, check out my profile. I'm just saying, Sony needs to double check their stratagey.
Again quality beats quantity.
did u see the sales between ps2 and gamecube?! or gamecube and xbox?! microsoft's not even competition for the sony and nintendo
Wow, Kingdom Hearts 2 was only out for 3 days and it was already number 9 on the list.
where's the psp??? and the gta???
im surprised the PSP ain't there
of course nintendo is doing well thier the best!
Once Blizzard release Starcraft: DS , it would be the death of PSP. Long live the BIG N.
Nice to see that although Nintendo isn't doing all that well on the console race, it's nice to see it leading the pack on the handhelds. I'm getting one.
DS is killing the PSP
why should we north americans give a hoot about japanese game stuff some of them arn't even released in north america. again some usuless japenese stuf
Great for Nintendo. As long as they keep releasing such high quality games, then they could just start taking over the North American market as well.