The company now looks likely to meets it’s ambitious target of selling two million units of the new system within six weeks, and will no doubt be hoping to repeat this success when the GBA SP launches in the USA and Europe at the end of March.
It’s widely hoped that the GBA SP will be more appealing to older gamers than the original iteration of the hardware was. Although some titles – particularly first-party Nintendo games – continue to perform well on the GBA, software sales on the system have been massively disappointing in Europe. It’s possible that the launch of the GBA SP may help to shore up this flagging market – although many maintain that the only way to boost GBA game sales will be with a software price cut. A drop to approximately £25 RRP has been rumoured for some time.
The launch of the redesigned console was buoyed in Japan by the simultaneous launch of Square’s Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, which was also sold in a special pack with the GBA SP and has been selling at a 1:1 ratio with the new console according to some reports.
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is one of the first fruits of a recently resumed relationship between Square and Nintendo, which many believe was made possible by the departure of long-serving Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi – whose outspoken comments on Square and other Japanese software companies fuelled a cold war between the two companies for several years.
Although the original Final Fantasy Tactics title, which appeared on the PlayStation, was never released in Europe, it became a cult hit in the USA and was widely imported by European RPG and strategy fans.
Source: Gamesindustry.biz
