Pokemon Rides Tip Of Sales Spike In Japan

In what has proved to be the busiest week of the year, the Japanese charts have seen sales dramatically increase ahead of the main gift giving season. The top ten has seen relatively little change in terms of positions, but every single title has sold over 100,000 units – usually the expected minimum for a number one title at any other time of the year. With this week’s sales Pokemon Diamond/Pearl for DS has now sold over 4.3 million copies in Japan, maintaining its record as the fastest selling title ever for the already record breaking franchise. The big surprise for the week though is the success of Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, which became the second best selling game of the week and one of the fastest selling PSP titles all year in Japan. New Super Mario Bros. for DS also saw its lifetime total in Japan receive a significant boost, with almost 3.7 million copies sold so far, while DS titles such as Kirby Squeak Squad and Sega’s Love and Berry also continued to sell well. The only other new entry of the week is what will be known in the West as Dawn of Mana for PlayStation 2, at number six, part of the continuing World of Mana series. With Nintendo able to ship more consoles, compared to the previous two weeks, the charts have seen a resurgence in Wii software sales, with two titles in the top ten. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess also charted at number twenty-one, immediately below Pokemon Battle Revolution and Wario Ware: Smooth Moves. There was only a single PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 each in the top fifty, with From Software’s Armored Core 4 at number twenty-six and Capcom’s Lost Planet at number twenty-eight. In hardware sales, the Nintendo DS sold 485,964 units in total this week, a little short of its 598,000 total at the same time last year. Sales for the Wii was around three times that of previous weeks, for a total of 279,277, ahead of the PSP with a still impressive total of 138,588 units. The PlayStation 3 was the fourth best selling console of the week in Japan at 76,882 units, followed by the PlayStation 2 at 46,209 units and the Xbox 360 at 17,213 – almost unchanged from the previous week. The Game Boy Advance family of consoles sold 4,309 units and the GameCube 1,250.

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