Third-party games give a big boost to 3DS sales in Japan

While PS Vita's hardware sales continues to reach new lows in Japan, the Nintendo 3DS saw a surge in system sales there alongside popular third-party releases like New Love Plus (pictured). New and old 3DS titles dominated software sales in Japan last week -- eight out of the twelve top-selling games in the country were for Nintendo's handheld, including Mario Kart 7 and Super Mario 3D Land, according to data from Media Create. And while Nintendo platforms are often criticized for favoring first-party releases, all of the other games are from third-party publishers, such as Capcom's Monster Hunter 3G and Resident Evil: Revelations, Namco Bandai's Tekken 3D, and Chunsoft's Good People Die. Konami's 3DS dating sim New Love Plus shipped last week and was the best-selling title, moving 104,969 copies. Square Enix did well with its new 3DS rhythm release Theatrhythm Final Fantasy too, selling 67,206 copies even though it was reportedly supply-constrained. Tekken 3D's debut, however, fell well below previous debuts from the franchise. The fighting game pushed only 9,421 units in its first week -- compared to PSP releases like 2005's Tekken: Dark Resurrection (54,764 sales in its first week, according to Famitsu) and 2010's Tekken 6 (29,240 sales). The only other notable release last week, Sega's Binary Domain, was the second biggest-selling game with its PlayStation 3 edition. The third person-shooter, which was developed by the same team behind the Yakuza series, sold 73,683 copies. On the hardware side, 3DS benefitted from those new releases and sold 94,667 units last week, compared to 67,558 in the week previous. PS Vita, though, didn't get much help from its version of Good People Die or Gravity Rush, and hit a new low of 12,309 systems sold.