Just one. Just one GameCube title in the ranking once again, this time it's a new entry though, our little electric friend, Chibi-Robo. Chibi-Robo vs the Big Bad Playstation ?

This week is one hell of a bad week. Samus is left all alone to fight the crushing invasions of PS2 titles and she's nearly out of ammo at the bottom of the ranking, level 44. Counting the titles per console reveals how desperate indeed is the fight: exactly half of the top 50 is made of PS2 games (25), followed by the DS (14), the GBA (6), the PSP(4) and the GC (1). A weird situation where it looks like Nintendo is using its portables to compete with Sony's home console ! What an awkward move to have neglected the GameCube so early. One website was saying that the killer has been killed last week, because of Killer 7's highly disappointing sales results. But the actual killing of the GameCube version happened this week with one shocking fact: the game is gone from the ranking, already ! Meaning it lost more than 30 places in 7 days, making it one of the worst performances for a Capcom's title on GameCube, along the lines of Gotcha Force. Add to this the premature departure of Fire Emblem and NBA Street and you can easily figure the GameCube is now in deep trouble even in Japan.

It's sad, but true: for long announced as a GameCube exclusive, Killer 7 has been released for both Playstation 2 and GameCube, and the Playstation 2 version has outsold the GameCube one. Killer 7 GC is at the twentieth spot and Killer 7 PS2 at the sixth spot, in both case however, sales are disappointing: only 15.000 units for the best selling of the two. Other bad news this week include a collapse in the chart for the remaining GC titles and more dramatically for Metroid Prime 2, moving from 16th to 38th, almost at the same level as with Electronic Arts' NBA Street V3.

There's a lot of movements inside the general ranking, but it barely affects GameCube titles, which move as we expected them to move: downwards. The latest entries, Metroid Prime 2 and NBA Street V3, fall fast. Only Fire Emblem manages to go up, but merely by one place; the game will reach 150.000 units without ease.

Considering the competition this week, both Metroid Prime 2 and NBA Street V3 manage to rise pretty high in the charts. Nevertheless, as expected, they still fail to impress and are beaten hands down by 5 new PS2 entries. It's a pity for the GameCube in Japan, perhaps the country where the console performs the best at the moment. There is a lack of titles even though there is still a demand for fresh and exciting new titles that both Nintendo and third-parties are unable to provide, cynical observers might wish to add it's a problem which has been plaguing the console since its launch and few were the months when the GameCube had ten or more new titles available.

Falling down, falling down...

Some games (PS2 mostly) came back from the depth of the ranking, making some other games, like Donkey Konga 3, fall into it. Both Fire Emblem: Souen no Kiseki (well, Path of Radiance) and Starfox Assault recorded a sharp drop. In other words, this is no exciting week for GameCube owners. New games are coming on May 26, but don't expect great performances either, Metroid Prime 2 and NBA Street V3 are not meant to please Japanese crowd.

The result of last week's slump is that games are now going up strongly, at least Starfox Assault and Donkey Konga, strangely Fire Emblem remains unaffected and continue to drop in the ranking, despite being a higher quality title than the two others aforementioned. Interestingly, here is the market share for this week, which in Japan was the Golden Week, one of the most important holidays of the year: DS (38.6%), PS2 (25.1%), PSP (23.4%), GBA (9.1%), GC (3.6%) and other systems (0.2%). The total share is quite fairly divided between Sony (48.5%) and Nintendo (51.3%), although Nintendo is clearly the winner. What is more surprising is that sales of handheld are selling much more than home consoles games, taking a 71.1% share. And this might be thanks to Nintendogs.

Many Playstation 2 new entries this week provoke a slump in the ranking. Donkey Konga 3 is temporarily gone while both Fire Emblem and Starfox fall.

Even if the week is good for Nintendo, 98.000 for Fire Emblem is pretty disappointing for a start. It's much less than Pikmin 2, Resident Evil 4 or Mario Tennis for instance, anf more like the first-week results of Naruto games and Mario Party 6. But tactical RPG might be less popular than actual RPG, after all it is a more complex and austere genre. Strong sales for DS games compensate this half-success: Naruto managed to grab the third spot with 87.000 units but Nintendogs is the most impressive of all. Fresh from its Famitsu's perfect score, the three iterations of the game ranks 5th (75.000), 6th (49.000) and 7th (44.000), a total of 169.000 units !

The gap between Starfox-Donkey Kong and One Piece is widening. And strangely, Starfox Assault keeps going up, it has now even left Donkey Konga 3 behind. A Namco vs Namco match ? More excitement next week with the release of Fire Emblem: Souen no Kiseki. This one might be shake things up.

The buggy latest Harvest Moon title is gone, Donkey Konga 3 and One Piece fall. Unexpectedly, Starfox Assault rose three places, probably due to the lack ot new titles.

Not much happening this week, all games are going down, by a few spots only, limiting the damages. One surprise though, last week's miracle, Gashbell or Zatchbell 2 is already out of the ranking (and so is its PS2 counterpart !).

Something exceptional happened this week. You glanced through the ranking but you didn't notice anything special, did you ? That's normal, because hardly anyone will notice, although from what I can recall, since the GameCube has been released it is the first time something like this happens. The first time ! What happened is, this week, a game was released on both Playstation 2 and GameCube, and the GameCube version outsold the Playstation 2 version ! This is truly amazing, and perhaps I know the reason (but I might be mistaken). First of all, the game is Konjiki no Gashbell!! 2 a Japanese game by Bandai from an anime/manga, it ranks at the 39th spot, which is pretty bad, but still two ranks above the Playstation 2 version, hurrah ! So the reason why, possibly, the GC version outsold its PS2 counterpart is because the first game originally was released on GC only, or before the PS2 version at least. I think so, but I can't be sure, if I'm wrong, if it didn't happen, well, it's truly a miracle ! But it's very unlikely things will go that way from now on, let's not dream too hard, the awakening might hurt. Except this game miracle, nothing else of importance is happening in the ranking, last week new games fell along with the older games, even though Starfox Assault is now ahead of One Piece.

Let there be light ! Resident Evil 4 returned to the kingdom of shadows, and now Donkey Kong's smile shines over this week's ranking. Well, to tell the truth, it's not such a big smile when DK is done calculating the decreasing first week sales of his drumming saga: 55.000 units for the first game, 47.000 for the second one, and now 42.000 for the last one. The number of the GameCube installed base has increased but the sales of the Donkey Konga games keep shrinking. Obviously the series is not so attractive and perhaps Nintendo is wasting its time in that direction. Also entering the ranking is One Piece Grand ! Rush from the famous manga/anime. Interestingly, even though the game is beaten by the Playstation 2 version, it is not so far behind it.

A quiet week again, everybody goes down and Resident Evil 4 is almost out of the ranking. Interestingly though, if you look at the market share of game software companies in Japan for the two past months, like last year, Nintendo is leading: 1.Nintendo (22%), 2.Square-Enix (14%), 3.Konami (10%), 4.Bandai (7%), 5.Namco (6%), 6.Pokemon Co. (6%), 7.SCE (6%), 8.Banpresto (5%), 9.Capcom (5%), 10.Koei (4%).

Yep, Harvest Moon: Poem of Happiness is already out, and the lack of hype is felt also in the sales: twice less than for Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, practically 2 years ago, and barely 3.000 units more than the For Girls version. Perhaps too many Harvest Moon on GameCube ? Starfox Assault weakens but still remains well ahead of the new comer and even further from Resident Evil 4, losing one place this week.

Maybe even more surprising than Starfox Assault's pretty good entrance is how deep Resident Evil plunged this week, minus 25 ranks. At this pace, it won't be here next time. But back to Starfox, even though its numbers are not amazing, they are still better than expected: much better than Donkey Konga's and F-Zero GX's first week for instance. The explanation behind it is obvious: the lack of titles. Because there's practically nothing coming out on GameCube, the few titles are bound to sell well. Except... that it didn't seemingly work out for Chaos Field Expanded which failed to appear in the ranking. Was it really smart to release two action/shooter the same day ? Have a guess.

It's getting tight for the GameCube in Japan with only one game in the top 50, struggling to remain within. Mario Party 6 and Naruto 3 have been pushed out by a surge of new PS2 titles and the fate of Resident Evil 4 is insecure. The performance of Capcom's title hasn't been as good as expected, a sad phrase you often heard during the past years of the GameCube life. However, one startling thing to note is in the most wanted chart: Resident Evil 4 appears at the 5th rank... for Playstation 2, which means, by announcing the port of the game for PS2 before its release on GameCube, Capcom really screwed Nintendo and probably made them lost a fair deal of sales. Today, thursday 24, Starfox Assault and Chaos Field Expanded are released in Japan, there's not much to expect in term of sales from these two shooting games, but hopefully, they will manage to make it in the ranking and make it at a decent spot.

Resident Evil 4 falls a little, Mario Party 6 gains a little, Naruto doesn't move, GameCube sales hit their lowest this year, and that's all what's happening this week. Talk about excitement.

Sadly, and predictably, Resident Evil 4 sales have fallen sharply. What was hardly predictable though, is how strongly they would fall: by 80% ! A real knockdown. It is difficult to find the true reason behind this collapse, possibly it could be due to strong pre-orders which unbalanced the two weeks result. One thing to take into consideration though, is that the game was first released in North America. Why does it matter ? Because, unlike many games, that means the exported number of RE4 in the Japanese sales results must be extremely low. This is an encouraging thought, but is it enough ?

And in, it came, the mighty long-awaited horror. The firt results are... good. But not amazing. As a GC title, it's just a good number, as a third party title, it's an excellent number. For instance, it did better than Mario Party 6 and Naruto 3 in their first week, but separately, not altogether. On the other hand, it did less well than Mario Tennis, which is worrying for the future sales of the title. As usual, it's the second week which is going to be decisive. If sales fall sharply, it will be bad because a raise afterwards very rarely happen, if the sales are as high as this week or just a little bit under, it will be very good because the game will pass in two weeks the quarter of a million bar. And if the game sold more than it did in the first week, well, it would be a miracle, frankly speaking. At least, Resident Evil 4 has one small record: it's the best selling Resident Evil title on GameCube, as well as one of the best selling third-party titles (second behind Tales of Symphonia, or third, if one includes Crystal Chronicles). Let's hope it's not afraid to break more records and more impressive ones.

Only two GameCube titles left in the ranking, and they are falling fast. The moment of truth, however, is next week, with sales results for Resident Evil 4. In February, don't expect any action before the end of the month, and it won't be much, Starfox's popularity being quite restrained in Japan.

Donkey Kong Jungle Beat left the ranking after being in for a month, pretty bad performance given the title had received a warm welcome at the E3. Other GameCube titles fall sharply this week while several Sony's titles are on the rise (for both PS2 and PSP). One new entry, probably gone next week: Goldeneye: Rogue Agent (aka Dark Agent in Japan) from EA at the 47th spot; the PS2 version entered this week too at the 10th spot.

All GC titles got a boost this week, but it's too early to know if it is significant or not.

Once again, a comparison, this time between the week ending 2004 and this same week one year before. Last year, there were 10 GC games in the ranking, 4 of which were among the top 10; this year, we count only 4 GC games in the ranking, and only one in the top 10, at the 9th place. However, the end of 2004 saw the launch of 2 new consoles, one being from Nintendo (the DS, and Sony's PSP). In november and december 2003, there were 31 titles released for GameCube (including 4 from Nintendo, the ones to make it in the top 10), while on the same period of 2004, 10 titles only were released (including 2 from Nintendo, ranking high). In 2003, among the best selling titles, we had: Mario Kart Double Dash!!, Mario Party 5, Naruto 2 and Donkey Konga. In 2004: Mario Tennis, Mario Party 6, Naruto 3 and Donkey Kong Jungle Beat. In other words, it looks very much like the year before, with many sequels or same characters. That's one disappointement. The second disappointment, beside the obvious lack of originality, which is even going to worsen in 2005 (Mario Baseball, Donkey Konga 3, Dance Dance Revolution with Mario... how pathetic Nintendo can be ?), is that the game didn't perform so well. Mario Party 5 after 7 weeks, had sold about 550.000 units, MP6 is barely at 425.000 at the moment. Donkey Konga was still selling 77.000 units a week where DK Jungle Beat is selling 32.000. And Mario Kart sold almost 2 times more, with 600.000 units, than Mario Tennis. Naruto is the only one whose sales are even from a year to another. Given that there are only 2 DS titles in the top 30, the fault can be entirely put on the new console. For the GameCube, no doubt that this year is worse than the past one in term of commitment from the editors, even in term of involvement from Nintendo's part and, perhaps as a result, in term of sales.