Dragon Ball Z Sparks Japanese Charts Into Life

After posting the lowest week of sales all year, during which Halo 3 debuted at number one, the Japanese software sales charts have returned to a more familiar state – with Dragon Ball Z: Sparking! METEOR (Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 in the West) on PlayStation 2 entering the charts at number one with 204,000 units sold. Overall sales are still below average, although second placed PSP title Gundam Battle Chronicle has performed well with 86,000 units sold. The most significant trend continues to be a quieter time for Nintendo software and hardware, with fifteen Nintendo DS titles in the top thirty this week, compared to many more in previous weeks. One less successful launch on Nintendo's console is the debut of Mistwalker’s ASH: Archaic Sealed Heat on Nintendo DS, with just 50,000 units sold. The same developer’s Blue Dragon on Xbox 360 sold almost twice this amount at a much busier time of year in 2006. There was also disappointment for the Wii version of Dragon Ball Z: Sparking! METEOR which sold only 40,000 units, despite the considerable success of the PlayStation 2 version. However, the large disparity in installed userbase for each console does make direct comparisons somewhat unfair. The final new entry of the week in the top ten is a PlayStation 2 spin-off from Konami’s long-running Power Pro baseball series, focusing on the U.S. MLB league, which sold 35,000 units. Although Halo 3 has fallen completely outside of the top thirty this week, suggesting the title’s initial success was due only to a hardcore group of fans, the rest of the charts is made up of now familiar faces. Nintendo's Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 2 for DS, in particular, continues performing strongly – with combined sales of the title totaling 63,000 units this week.

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