The Japanese games industry saw a decline of eight percent in 2011.

That was despite a 2.4 percent increase in hardware sales — up to ¥179,740 million ($2.3 billion) — spurred by the releases of the Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita. Indeed, while the hardware bump was significant, it wasn't enough to stave off a whopping 14 percent drop in software sales, which represented a total of ¥274,640 million ($3.5 billion). In all, the Japanese game market decreased by eight percent.

Of course, 2011 was also the year that Japan was hit by a pretty devastating earthquake, so the decline is not entirely surprising.

The Nintendo 3DS was the top-selling hardware for 2011, with the PSP and PS3 both behind it. The PSP managed sales of nearly 2 million units for the year, while the PS3 was just shy of 1.5 million. Despite being on the market for around two weeks, the PlayStation Vita managed to sell 400k units in 2011.

Hit the jump for the full hardware and software breakdown.

Hardware

  • Nintendo 3DS: 4,135,739
  • PSP: 1,960,177 (18,237,108)
  • PlayStation 3: 1,467,261 (7,417,148)
  • Wii: 937,451 (12,167,743)
  • Nintendo DS: 711,204 (32,835,502)
  • PlayStation Vita: 402,794
  • Xbox 360: 114,075 (1,520,738)

Software

  • 01. [3DS] Mario Kart 7 (Nintendo, 12/1/2011): 1,082,391
  • 02. [3DS] Super Mario 3D Land (Nintendo, 11/3/2011): 1,042,511
  • 03. [PSP] Monster Hunter Portable 3rd (Capcom, 12/1/2010): 1,021,457 (4,502,446)
  • 04. [3DS] Monster Hunter 3G (Capcom, 12/10/2011): 809,322
  • 05. [PS3] Final Fantasy XIII-2 (Square Enix, 12/15/2011): 697,146
  • 06. [PSP] Final Fantasy Type-0 (Square Enix, 10/27/2011): 696,428
  • 07. [WII] Minna no Rhythm Tengoku (Nintendo, 7/21/2011): 633,429
  • 08. [PS3] Tales of Xillia (Namco Bandai, 9/8/2011): 632,151
  • 09. [WII] Wii Sports Resort (Nintendo, 6/25/2009): 612,807 (2,732,655)
  • 10. [WII] Wii Party (Nintendo, 7/8/2010): 584,545 (2,123,773)

[source andriasang.com]