This chart compares software unit sales during the corresponding periods in the recent three years.
In 2010, "Pokémon Black" & "Pokémon White" for Nintendo DS made the fastest record in the industry to reach the five million unit sales mark, and "Monster Hunter" also sold very well as I said earlier.  In addition, in Japan, a number of new titles were launched for PSP.  Supported by PSP software sales, the Japanese software unit sales in 2010 showed a slight year-on-year increase.
When we focus upon the Nintendo DS software sales, however, due to factors such as there were no other great hit titles than "Pokémon Black" & "Pokémon White", the 2010 sales were less than those of 2009.

Amid such circumstances, Nintendo DS largely decreased its share in the handheld software unit sales market in Japan.  I will show you the corresponding data in the U.S. and in Europe.  Please note that the situations there are different from that in Japan.

We have combined the home console and handheld software unit sales transitions.
We have seen a small decrease as the increase in the handheld software sales could not fully cover the decrease in home console software sales.
When we look at a chart like this, we notice that the handheld software sales occupy a fairly large portion of the entire software unit sales.  This is one of the very unique characteristics of the Japanese video game market.

Now, we are looking at the software unit sales share transitions in Japan by the hardware manufacturers.  Due especially to the change in the handheld software unit sales share transitions, Nintendo’s overall software market share showed a decline.

Next, we’ll see the situation in the United States.

This chart shows the 20 best-selling software titles in Japan in 2010.
Eleven titles for Nintendo platforms hit the chart, including “New Super Mario Bros. Wii”, “Wii Fit Plus”, “Mario Kart Wii”, “JUST DANCE” and “Wii Sports Resort” for Wii as well as “New Super Mario Bros.” for Nintendo DS, and these six titles were all launched in previous years.  On the contrary, for the other companies’ platforms, “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” was the only title which was launched in the previous year.  Nintendo platforms, for which a number of long-sellers exist, stand in sheer contrast to other companies’ platforms, for which most of the sales are completed in a fairly short period of time after the software’s launch.  One difference from the Japanese market situation is that most of the multi-platform titles are selling more on Xbox 360 than PS3.
I introduced you to Ubisoft’s “JUST DANCE” during our Financial Briefing in May 2010.  This software has established the brand new “dance game” genre in the home console market and entered into this top 20 U.S. chart together with its sequel, “JUST DANCE 2.”  Ubisoft also made a hit with its “Michael Jackson: The Experience”, and Disney’s “Epic Mickey” and THQ’s “uDraw” also have become hit titles, though they have not been ranked in the top 20 chart.  Unlike in Japan, Nintendo software titles were not the only titles for Nintendo platforms that were hits in the U.S. last year.

This chart shows the weekly sales of home console hardware in the U.S.  The monthly data from the independent NPD Group in the U.S. fluctuates from a four-week month to a five-week month, so in this graph, we are showing the weekly averages.  The deep colors are for 2010, and the lighter colors are for 2009.
At the Corporate Management Policy Briefing that we held at the end of last October, I said that we were expecting to recover our momentum as the sales would be further concentrated in the year-end sales period than before.  However, because as of October last year, the sales of Wii were about half of its sales in 2009, our shareholders and investors must have been concerned until we could actually show the results.
When we look carefully at the weekly sales transitions, we can notice that the sales situation has changed since the launch of the red Wii hardware which was launched to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Super Mario Bros.  After the launch, specifically from the Thanksgiving holidays, the sales largely increased.  The unit sales of Wii in the U.S. in December 2010 could not reach those in December 2009, but in the previous year, Wii had made a record single-month sales in the U.S. video game market by selling more than 3.8 million units in December 2009 alone.  Wii sold more than 2,350,000 units of hardware in December 2010, which was better than December 2008, when Wii was selling very well.  As a result, Wii was able to establish another record in the U.S. home console market by selling more than seven million units in the U.S. in three consecutive years.

Utilizing the NPD data, we are now comparing the unit sales transitions of home console platforms in the U.S. from 2008 to 2010.  Wii’s annual sales decreased while Xbox 360 significantly increased its sales.  Xbox 360’s sales in 2010 calendar year were coming closer to those of Wii.  When we look at the market share, only Microsoft increased its market share, and both Nintendo and Sony decreased their shares.
The fact that Microsoft significantly increased its market share is a very unique characteristic of the U.S. market that is not found anywhere else.

We are now looking at the home console software sales transitions in the U.S.
In terms of the unit sales number, home console software showed a small year-on-year increase.  Before the launch of the latest iteration of "Call of Duty" which is subtitled “Black Ops”, many in the industry anticipated that this software would not outsell the previous version called “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.”  However, in the end, the software yielded an even better result than the previous version and contributed to the entire software market.  When it comes to software for Wii, the year-to-date unit sales until November were less than those for Xbox 360.  However, in December, a number of software titles, including the evergreen titles with long tails, were selling well on Wii.  When we see the calendar year 2010, Wii was able to sell more software than Xbox 360 did.

When we look at the software unit sales market share, Sony’s share remains to be almost the same with 2009 as the decrease in PS2 software was offset by the increase in PS3 software.  Wii software unit sales decreased a bit, which increased Xbox 360’s software share.