Home video game market hits record in 2007

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Sales of home-use video game hardware and software in Japan grew 3.8% in fiscal 2007 to a record 676.9 billion yen, game magazine publisher Enterbrain Inc said Thursday. The combined sales reached the highest level since Enterbrain started taking the statistics in fiscal 1997, it said.

Nintendo Co was the top seller of both hardware and software in terms of volume. This apparently resulted from the company’s successful efforts to expand the range of users to housewives and aged people.

Japan’s total sales of game hardware in the year, which closed Monday, increased 5.2% to 317.4 billion yen. Software sales were up 2.6% at 359.4 billion yen.

Sales of the Nintendo DS portable machine totaled 6,343,547 units, outnumbering all other game consoles. Since its release in December 2004, cumulative sales of the Nintendo DS reached 22.17 million units.

Sales of Nitendo’s Wii console totaled 3,741,946 units, far exceeding 1,197,418 units of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.’s PlayStation 3.

Nintendo’s Wii Fit, a physical fitness game, was the best-selling software in the year. Sales totaled 1,762,193 copies in the four months since its release last December.

Nintendo’s software occupied the first to fourth slots on the list of best-selling software.