Skyward Sword: First Week Software Sales in Japan

The folks over at VG Chartz have posted a preview of this weeks sales numbers over in Japan. The sales figures are as of the week ending November 27th. So with Skyward Sword hitting Japanese shelves on November 23rd, these numbers only show 5 days of sales. It’s no surprise, but Skyward Sword topped the charts in Japan, selling over 165,000 copies in the first 5 days alone. Here is some analysis of the Skyward Swords sales from the folks over at VG Chartz

The result is not bad for Zelda, as games in the series have not topped 1m units in Japan for over well over a decade now. The last Zelda to top 1m units in Japan was Ocarina of Time which opened to 146,000 units in 1998. A Link to the Past for the SNES topped 1m on a 300k+ opening, and data for the NES Zelda games is not available. Wind Waker opened to 360,000+ in Japan for the GC, but never got to even 900,000 units, while Twilight Princess for Wii & GC sold 640,000 lifetime on a roughly 150,000+ combined opening week. It is nearly impossible to say how well Zelda will sell in Japan currently, as the series is heavily dependent on word of mouth in Japan. What we can say is that the franchise is well below Monster Hunter, Pokemon, Dragon Quest, and a handfull of other games capable of Zelda’s lifetime figures in less than week – its just nowhere near a top tier franchise in Japan as it is in the West.

It’s strange to hear that the Legend of Zelda series is no longer a top tier franchise in Japan. Perhaps it is a cultural thing, but it just doesn’t get the numbers that it did 15-20 years ago. That being said, Skyward Sword did finish with 103,000 pre-orders in Japan, so that means an additional 62,000 folks bought it in the first few days who didn’t reserve it. A solid number indeed. It’s still too soon to see what the numbers will be like here in America and for the folks in Europe, but we’ll likely get those opening weekend numbers in shortly.

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