Japanese Charts: Tales Of The World Leads As Sales Spring Into Life

After several weeks of near comatose sales the Japanese charts have seen the first signs of spring with four new titles selling over 100,000 units each – lead by two new PSP games. At number one is Namco Bandai’s Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2, a spin-off from the regular Tales series and featuring characters from multiple previous games. Impressive first week sales of 213,000 units have already broken the lifetime-to-date sales of many recent Tales titles, including Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World on Wii and Tales of Vesperia on Xbox 360. At number two is the PSP version of what is known in the West as Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 from Konami, with 109,000 unit sales. The PlayStation 2 version is one place behind it with 108,000 unit sales. Although the PSP first week sales are in line with many previous iterations of the game, PlayStation 2 sales are considerably down from previous highs of around 500,000 units. Although the drop in sales is to be expected given the PlayStation 2 format’s age, the current generation formats have so far failed to pick up the slack. The PlayStation 3 version released in December sold only 168,000 units in its first week and the Xbox 360 version failed to chart in the top 30. Although critically acclaimed, the significantly different Wii version sold only 36,000 units in its debut last February. The final new entries in the top 10 are the Nintendo DS and Wii versions of Square Enix’s Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles - Echoes of Time. Here again there is a significant difference between portable and home console sales, with the DS version at number four selling 102,000 units in its first week, but the Wii version at number seven only 22,000 units. Other new releases outside the top 10 include Namco Bandai’s anime license Soul Eater: Battle Resonance for PSP at number 14, fellow anime license Vampire Kishi/Knight DS from D3 Publisher at number 15 and the PS3 version of Tomb Raider: Underworld at number 18. From Software’s Ninja Blade on Xbox 360 debuts at number 19 and Koei’s romantic visual novel Harukanaru Toki no Naka de Yumenoukihashi Special enters at number 20.

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