Japanese Market Continues To Experience Shrinkage

More bad news for the Japanese game market. According to Famitsu publisher Enterbrain, the domestic market shrunk by 10.5% in the first half of fiscal 2009.

Hardware sales are down 15.1 percent, and game software sales are down 7.5%.

The hardware sales for the period were:

Nintendo DS (DS Lite, DSi, etc)
First Half Fiscal 2009: 1,698,818 units
Life-to-date: 27,851,784 units

PSP
First Half Fiscal 2009: 813,604 units
Life-to-date: 12,618,193 units

Wii
First Half Fiscal 2009: 594,398 units
Life-to-date: 8,547,552 units

PlayStation 3
First Half Fiscal 2009: 581,676 units
Life-to-date: 3,591,071 units

Xbox 360
First Half Fiscal 2009: 137,059 units
Life-to-date: 1,138,250 units

The top five selling games were Dragon Quest IX (3.92 million copies), Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver (2.06 million), Wii Sports Resort (1.19 million), Tomodachi Collection (1.15 million) and Monster Hunter 3 (908,693 copies).

This data is from the period beginning March 31, 2009 and ending September 28, 2009.

2009年度上半期のゲーム市場規模は前年度同期比10.5パーセント減 [ファミ通.com]