Phantasy Star Portable Leads Surging Japanese Chart

After a generally slow month of sales, the Japanese sales charts registered an extremely busy week -- three titles sold over 100,000 units, and five new entries made the top ten. The top-selling game of the week is Sega’s Phantasy Star Portable on PSP, with 342,000 units sold. The best-selling Monster Hunter Portable series has long been compared with the original Phantasy Star Online, and Sega’s new title already appears to be sharing some of the same success as Capcom’s runaway hit. The second-highest new entry of the week is Rhythm Tengoku Gold on the Nintendo DS with 213,000 units sold. A sequel to the original Game Boy Advance game by Nintendo’s Wario Ware team, it is to be marketed in the West as Rhythm Heaven. Down at number three, but still with 112,000 unit sales, is Dragon Quest V on Nintendo DS, but the third-highest entry of the week is SoulCalibur IV on the PlayStation 3. Coming in at number four, the game sold 75,000 unit sales. Despite the wide difference in installed user base, the Xbox 360 version was only two places behind with 35,000 unit sales. The final new entry of the week, at number seven, is the fourth entry of what is known in the West as Fatal Frame (aka Project Zero). First week sales of the survival horror were 33,000 units – a little below the 38,617 unit debut of the PlayStation 2 version of the previous game. However, widely-reported bugs present in the game may have had an adverse affect on initial sales.

Media Create Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved.