Week 50 in Japan, Vita selling 25,000 easy

As the Vita version of Minecraft hits 100,000 sales on the Japanese PSN, we look to the boxed copy sales to give the format a lift in Japan as it struggles to beat last year's highs. Sales according to Media Create are up a little on last week to just over 25,000, keeping them high but nothing like the stellar impact of FFX last year.

On the other hand, with no new games out, that's a decent figure. The PS4 manages to roar into life with 68,000 sales on the back of a GTA V bundle, but the 3DS remains king with 150,000 across the various versions.

The Vita is now only 10K ahead of last year's figures so will likely end up slightly down on the year. While there's lots of good stuff for Japan next year, looks like it will take nothing less than a full-on Monster Hunter game to lift the Vita above 1.1 million sales which it has managed in each of the last two years. Overall, Vita is approaching 3.5 million lifetime Japanese sales.

On the software side, there's no new Vita games out, with only Phantasy Star Nova skulking around the bottom of the charts. It should just keep into 150,000 territory before vanishing.

18./10. [PSV] Phantasy Star Nova (Sega) - 10.117 / 137.263 (-49%)