Japan Recently Saw Its Slowest Week For Videogame Sales This Year

Total sales of Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer 2014: Challenge of the Blue Samurai saw a slight increase in Japan during the week of June 16th – June 22nd, from 30,000 copies to 33,000 copies. Japanese sales tracker Media Create says this was due to the FIFA World Cup.

Challenge of the Blue Samurai is an updated version of Pro Evo Soccer 2014 with an emphasis on Japan’s national soccer team in particular, so that likely provided an incentive for football fans in Japan to pick the game up. Blue Samurai was available on PlayStation 3, Nintendo 3DS and PSP.

Meanwhile, other games weren’t as lucky. Sales of other titles were slow, partly because the week in question was the week before payday, according to Media Create, and payday often has a bearing on the sales of games.

As a result, sales of both new and old games were affected, and the week saw total software sales fall below 380,000 units, marking the slowest week in 2014 thus far. Prior to this, it was the third week of May.

Unfortunately, one can’t blame payday-related factors for this sad state of affairs, given that those are a monthly occurrence, and that payday week itself results in higher sales to offset the issue. The truth is that Japan’s games market desperately needs a shot in the arm, and these days, very few companies are providing it.

Note: This information pertains to two weeks ago, not last week, since sales data is released a week after the actual events. We’ve fixed the wording in the report to reflect this.