Operation Raccoon City sees big Japanese debut for Resident Evil spin-off

Capcom and Slant Six Games' Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City was the top-selling game in Japan last week after moving more than a quarter-million copies for PlayStation 3 (the Xbox 360 edition sold 16,285 copies). This is one of the biggest debuts for a non-numbered Resident Evil release, and bodes well for October's Resident Evil 6. Despite poor reviews for Operation Raccoon City, the game far outsold the first-week sales for the series' last non-mainline game, Resident Evil: Revelations for 3DS, which pushed 160,575 copies to a smaller install base. Mario Party 9 for Wii was the second best-selling game last week after moving 152,883 units, but that's way behind the first-week sales of the Nintendo franchise's last two games. In 2007, Mario Party 8 (Wii) sold 282,389 copies, while Mario Party DS sold 242,195 copies. PS Vita experienced a slight boost after suffering two straight weeks of record lows in hardware sales. The new handheld sold 12,299 systems, up from 8,206 in the previous week, but still not even matching the 22,457 sales of the seven-year-old PSP. The Sony handhelds likely received some help from Gust's Ciel Nosurge for PS Vita (33,324 copies sold) and four new PSP titles: Spike Chunsoft's Conception: Please Give Birth to My Child! (29,846), 5bp.'s Steins;Gate (24,849), and Namco Bandai's Even in a Game, Listen to Me Girls. I Am Your Father! (13,241) and Ao no Exorcist (11,939). Fire Emblem: Awakening for Nintendo 3DS, which was the top-selling game last week (242,600) and had one of the best debuts for the series, sold 60,313 copies. There are reports of the game selling out at some locations, so it's possible the title was supply-constrained. 3DS hardware sales fell from 84,760 to 74,282 units, but sales for the system's evergreen titles including Super Mario 3D Land, Mario Kart 7, Kid Icarus: Uprising, and Capcom's Monster Hunter 3G all enjoyed a 4-8 percent increase last week. Japanese sales are expected to increase across the board over the new several days due to the Golden Week period, a series of local holidays during which the country typically experiences a lift in consumer shopping. Full software and hardware sales charts for the April 23 to 29 period in Japan, provided by Media Create and translated on the NeoGAF forums, are available here.