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Skyward Sword Tops Japanese Charts, While 3DS Sales Continue To Rise

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword's debut in Japan has topped last week's software sales chart there, while the Nintendo 3DS continues to dominate hardware and move even more units week-over-week.

Eric Caoili, Blogger

November 30, 2011

3 Min Read
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The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword's debut in Japan has topped last week's software sales in the region, while the Nintendo 3DS continues to dominate hardware and move even more units week-over-week. After spending four days on Japanese retailers' shelves, Nintendo's Skyward Sword for Wii has sold nearly 195,000 copies and is the best-selling game for the November 21-27 period, according to data from tracking firm Media Create, as translated by NeoGAF. The Sega-published and Imageepoch-developed PSP title 7th Dragon 2020, a sequel to Japan-only DS RPG 7th Dragon, debuted at #2, followed by another newcomer, Dimps and D3 Publisher's PS3 game Saint Seiya Senki (Saint Seiya: Sanctuary Battle in Europe). Super Mario 3D Land, four weeks after its release, remains at #4 and has seen its weekly sales drop by just 1 percent to 61,710 copies. Aside from Bandai Namco and Ganbarion's One Piece: Gigant Battle 2 at #11, it is the only DS/3DS game in the top 20. Five more new titles broke into the top 10: Konami's Metal Gear Solid HD Edition (PS3) at #5, folowed by Level-5's Little Battlers eXperience: Boost (PSP), Bandai Namco's Weiss Schwarz Portable (PSP), Broccoli's Uta no Prince-Sama (PSP), and Bandai Namco's Taiko Drum Master Wii. Square Enix-published Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - Subtitled Edition for PS3 fell from #1 last week to #10, with sales dropping by 84 percent to 27,000. The Xbox 360 version, which was #7 last week, has disappeared from the top #20. The complete top 20 chart, as supplied by Media Create, is shown below:

LW

TW

Title

Publisher

Platform

Weekly Sales

NEW

1

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

Nintendo

Wii

194,978

NEW

2

7th Dragon 2020

Sega

PSP

122,498

NEW

3

Saint Seiya: Sanctuary Battle

D3 Publisher

PS3

66,557

4

4

Super Mario 3D Land

Nintendo

3DS

61,710

NEW

5

Metal Gear Solid HD Edition

Konami

PS3

61,192

NEW

6

Little Battlers eXperience: Boost

Level-5

PSP

60,727

NEW

7

Weiss Schwarz Portable: Boost Weiss / Boost Schwarz

Bandai Namco Games

PSP

47,586

NEW

8

Uta no Prince-Sama: Music

Broccoli

PSP

38,918

NEW

9

Taiko Drum Master Wii: Definitive Edition!

Bandai Namco Games

WII

32,098

1

10

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - Subtitled Edition

Square Enix

PS3

29,726

2

11

One Piece: Gigant Battle 2 - New World

Bandai Namco Games

DS

NEW

12

Pop'n Music Portable 2

Konami

PSP

3

13

Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch

Level-5

PS3

13

14

Kirby's Return to Dream Land

Nintendo

WII

6

15

Final Fantasy Type-0

Square Enix

PSP

8

16

Hatsune Miku: Project Diva Extend

Sega

PSP

12

17

PokePark 2: Beyond the World

Pokemon Co.

WII

17

18

Just Dance Wii

Nintendo

WII

19

19

Wii Party

Nintendo

WII

On the hardware side, Nintendo 3DS sales increased from 96,000 units to now nearly 121,000 -- likely driven by Super Mario 3D Land's popularity and anticipation for the release of Capcom's Monster Hunter Tri-G in two weeks. PS3 and PSP sales, though, both dropped by around 7,000 units to 34,000 and 33,000 respectively. Wii sales, helped by Skyward Sword, increased by 7,000, though it was still at fourth place last week with 20,000 consoles sold. Xbox 360, PS2, and DSi/DS models all saw about the same sales, all under 2,500 units. Below are the full sales rankings from Media Create for the week ended November 27, 2011. (The second chart lumps together sales of all models in a given line of hardware.)

LW

TW

Platform

Weekly Sales

Last Week

1

1

3DS

120,920

96,219

2

2

PS3

34,031

41,069

3

3

PSP

33,151

40,085

4

4

WII

20,148

13,613

5

5

DS

3,265

2,471

6

6

360

1,678

1,763

7

7

PS2

1,294

1,291

LW

TW

Platform

Weekly Sales

Last Week

1

1

3DS

120,920

120,920

2

2

PS3

34,031

34,031

3

3

PSP

33,151

33,151

4

4

WII

20,148

20,148

5

5

DSI LL

2,237

1,813

6

6

360

1,678

1,678

7

7

PS2

1,294

1,291

8

8

Dsi

993

897

9

9

DS Lite

35

31

Read more about:

2011

About the Author

Eric Caoili

Blogger

Eric Caoili currently serves as a news editor for Gamasutra, and has helmed numerous other UBM Techweb Game Network sites all now long-dead, including GameSetWatch. He is also co-editor for beloved handheld gaming blog Tiny Cartridge, and has contributed to Joystiq, Winamp, GamePro, and 4 Color Rebellion.

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