Game Market Shrinks in 2009 -- Enterbrain

Dengeki publisher ASCII Media Works shared sales data for 2009 just ahead of the break. Now it's Famitsu publisher Enterbrain's turn.

Famitsu.com passed along sales stats, from Enterbrain today, showing how the games market trended in 2009. The data covers from December 29, 2008 to December 27, 1009, giving it an extra week of calendar 2009 sales compared to the ASCII data.

Dragon Quest IX was the top selling game for the year, with its 4.1 million units easily beating Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver, New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Friend Collection. Thanks to the additional week, Final Fantasy XIII managed to squeeze into the top 5 in Enterbrain's chart.

Here's the full top 5:

• 1. Dragon Quest IX (Square Enix, DS): 4,100,968
• 2. Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver (Pokemon, DS): 3,382,597
• 3. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Nintendo, Wii): 2,485,150
• 4. Friend Collection (Nintendo, DS): 2,311,948
• 5. Final Fantasy XIII (Square Enix, PS3): 1,698,256

DS lead the way in hardware, outselling PSP nearly two to one. In consoles, Wii edged out PS3.

Here's the full hardware chart. The chart combines DS, DS Lite, DSi and DSi LL under the single DS category, and the PSP and PSP go under the single PSP category. The figures in parenthesis are life to date sales.

• Nintendo DS: 4,025,313 (29,160,589)
• PSP: 2,307,971 (13,386,455)
• Wii: 1,975,178 (9,501,999)
• PlayStation 3: 1,727,041 (4,391,407)
• Xbox 360: 331,706 (1,197,873)

As with ASCII, Enterbrain shows a drop in the overall market for 2009. Total sales for the year reached ¥542,640 million, down 6.9% from 2008. Hardware sales fell 13.6% to ¥216,490 million. Software fell 1.8% to ¥326,160 million.