http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=16697

Nintendo Drives Japanese Game Market Up 25% in June As has been the case just about every month lately, Nintendo completely dominated the Japanese video game landscape in June. Sales of DS and Wii hardware and software easily eclipsed the competition's sales. And the Wii now has the highest software attach rate of any platform since 1996. More within...

GameDaily BIZ has received the latest Japanese video game sales report from the Famitsu Marketing Data Service, covering the period from May 28 to June 24. Total sales were up 25.4 percent year-over-year, with hardware sales seeing growth of 48.4 percent and software sales up 7.5 percent.     Nintendo once again controlled the majority of the market. The DS and DS Lite combined to sell more than 535K units for the month. Famitsu noted that sales of the handheld were given a boost as well when Nintendo launched two new flavors on June 23, Gloss Silver and Metallic Rose (bringing the number of colors to 7). This is now the 15th consecutive month that the DS has sold over 500K units in Japan, according to Famitsu, and "Nintendo's flourishing handheld has still shown no sign of slowing down."   Right behind the DS in a distant second (but first for console hardware) was Nintendo's Wii with 271K units sold. This brings the Wii installed base in Japan to 2,764,000 within 30 weeks since launch. Interestingly, Famitsu noted that this sales tally could be higher, but the Wii has had a fantastic software attach rate nonetheless.   "Despite its penetration pace being slower than that of the PS2 (3,267,000 units sold as of its 30th week mark) or the GBA (3,306,000 units sold as of its 30th week mark) the Wii's total software sales have been far in excess of these other systems' in terms of volume –thanks to its outstanding software-hardware tie ratio, which ranks it the highest among all the gaming devices released since 1996," said the report.   As for the other platforms, the PSP sold 113,297 units; the PS2 sold over 49K units; the PS3 sold 41,628 units; and the Xbox 360 sold just 17,616 units.   On the software side, Nintendo's platforms are winning out as well. Nearly 1.7 million units of DS software and 392K units of Wii software were purchased during June. Together, the two systems controlled over 81 percent of the software market – very impressive. Meanwhile, the PS3 is languishing down at almost Xbox 360's level. The PS3 had 3.3 percent versus the 360's 2.1 percent of the software market. Only 5 out of the top 20 titles were on non-Nintendo platforms. We've posted the top 20 below for your perusal.

Interesting. It's worth noting that there are no pack-in games for the Wii in Japan.

What bothers me about all these news posts is that they always link the Wii and DS into a group. In truth, the DS is what's really demolishing the charts in Japan. Besides the high attach rate, the Wii isn't doing as good. For instance, there are only 3 games in the top 20. However, the article points out that between the DS and Wii, Nintendo has 15 of the top 20.

It tends to be misleading when combined. The wii is doing good, but I think it still could do even better with more (good) software support.

I think Wii Play still comes with a remote there though.

So much for the idea that casuals don't buy games though.

Impressive. Nintendo is topping both hardware sales and software attach rates on both of their games systems. I'm sure they couldn't be happier.

 If you mean it could sell more software yes, if you mean sell more hardware no, it is still supply constrained. Even if there only is three games in the top 20, the report claims that it has sold more than the PS2 and the GBA as this time of life. Not that shabby right?

Aye robjoh, thanks for the clarification. What I meant is that the Wii's attach rate would be even higher if there was stronger software support. The top 20 is really dominated by the DS, with the Wii not really differentiating as much from the other competitors on the list.

 Yeah I think alot of times casuals buy more games. If they are older have a job and make good money, they'll walk in a store and just buy a few games. That's my brother. where as I'll be anal about a game due to reviews and wait till I beat another game. Or I'll just rent some games or buy them used. Alot of casuals just dump the money, and I think were going to find Nintendo is going to benefit nicely this gen for going after this group.

I agree.  That's the reason the PS2 did great as well.  Casuals buy a lot of games.  Look at GT3.  It's 14+ Million copies were not to hardcore gamers only.  Neither were GTA's sales.

For the month:

Wii 392k software/271k hardware = 1.45 ratio
DS 1.7 million software/535k hardware = 3.2 ratio

Highest attach ratio since 1996? The DS is far more impressive. Of course it have the over 17 million base on its side.