Despite performing poorly in the West, it’s no real surprise that the PS Vita is still managing to achieve reasonable sales in its homeland, Japan week after week and it’s no wonder that there is a steady flow of games being released for the console there both digitally and – more importantly – at retail, something that is lacking here in the EU.

The latest figures released from Famitsu not only show the PS Vita still performing well in a market dominated by Nintendo, but it is also performing considerably better than the PS4 (which is now starting to make inroads in Japan), the PS3 and the XBox One which has failed to generate any real interest in the territory so far. The latest chart for hardware sales (week ending 18th January 2015) are:-

New Nintendo 3DS LL – 28,060 PS Vita – 18,226 PS4 – 13,074 New Nintendo 3DS – 11,166 Wii U – 9718 Nintendo 3DS – 6,422 PS3 – 6,061 Nintendo 3DS LL – 4,790 PS Vita TV – 716 Xbox One – 531

From the figures above it’s clearly still a Nintendo market but the prevalence of handheld gaming over consoles is a clear indicator of the key differences between the markets and is potentially a positive sign for the Vita in the long term. With two PS Vita games making an entry into the Top 10 at retail in Japan and these figures pointing at sales of over 250,000 units this year in Japan alone, commerically it makes sense for continued development of new Vita titles in Japan. While these titles may not be viable for physical releases in the West, digital releases – as has been the case so many times in the last year or so – is quite likely.

Like this: Like Loading...