DS, Monster Hunter Dominate Japan's Top Sellers For 2008

Enterbrain, publisher of weekly Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu, revealed the 100 best-selling video game software in the region in 2008. Capcom's PSP action role-playing game Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G, coming to the States as Monster Hunter Freedom Unite this spring, was the top-selling title for the year, with over 2,452,111 units sold since its release in March 2008. Pokemon Platinum for Nintendo DS, releasing stateside this March, was the next highest selling game, moving 2,187,337 units since September. Other DS titles in the top ten include Rhythm Heaven (1,350,671), Dragon Quest V (1,176,082), and Kirby Super Star Ultra (855,427). There are 47 DS games in the list in all, including several games released as far back as 2005, such as Mario Kart DS (621,890) at 16 and Animal Crossing: Wild World (338,531) at 29. For Nintendo's other console, Wii Fit was the third top-selling game in Japan in 2008, with 2,149,131 copies sold this year, and 2,967,297 sold in its lifetime. Mario Kart Wii (2,003,315) and Super Smash Bros. Brawl took the fourth and fifth spots respectively (1,747,113), while Animal Crossing: City Folk placed seventh with 895,302 units and a non-bundled Wii Sports was 10th with 841,736 units. 15 Wii games made the list. Konami's Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots was the highest selling PlayStation 3 game, selling 686,254 since June and taking the 11th spot. Though MGS4 was the only PS3 title to crack the top 30, ten PS3 releases in all were included in the top 100, including Devil May Cry 4 (310,102) at 33 and Grand Theft Auto IV (195,779) at 66. Twelve PlayStation 2 games appeared in the chart, with Super Robot Taisen Z (480,093) selling the most and placing 20th. 15 PSP games were also listed, including Dissidia Final Fantasy (660,262) and Phantasy Star Portable, taking the 12th and 14th positions respectively. Only one Xbox 360 title charted, Namco Bandai's RPG Tales of Vesperia, which was number 82 with 161,070 copies sold since its debut in July 2008. Nintendo shifted the most software in the region in 2008, selling some 19,100,000 games, but the company was down from 23,520,000 software units sold in the previous year, according to Famitsu's numbers posted by fansite PS3Hyper. Namco Bandai Games, the second best-selling publisher of the year, however, increased its units sales by over one million since 2007, and sold about 8,550,000 games in 2008. Capcom (5,340,000) and Konami (5,040,000) were the third and fourth top-selling publishers of the year, respectively. Square Enix, which was the second highest-selling publisher in 2007 with 7,580,000 software units sold, moved only 4,040,000 copies in 2008 and dropped to fifth.