Nintendo’s Brawl Smashes Open Japanese Charts

The release of what is known in the West as Super Smash Bros. Brawl, has enjoyed a hugely successful opening in Japan, with first week sales that put it in the top tier of Japanese franchises. With the best debut of any Wii game to date, the game sold approximately 820,000 units in just two days – a figure only traditionally exceeded in Japan by blockbuster role-playing game franchises such as Pokemon, Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. Even without the release of Brawl, this week’s chart marks an abrupt end to the post-New Year decline in sales, with a large number of new entries across all formats and four titles with sales above 100,000 units. The second highest entry of the week is Capcom’s Devil May Cry 4 for PlayStation 3, which becomes the fastest selling new title on the system with a total of 205,000 – beating the likes of Dynasty Warriors 6 and Gran Turismo 5: Prologue. The Xbox 360 version also performed well with around 40,000 units sold at number seven. New at number three in the charts is role-playing game Tales of Destiny: Directors’ Cut with as much as 117,000 unit sales – despite being a re-release of the PlayStation 2 remake of the PSone original. The fourth highest new entry of the week is manga and anime licensed adventure game Suzumiya Haruhi no Tomadoi with 114,000 units sold. With Wii Fit still selling an impressive 73,000 units this week the fifth new entry, at number six, is Disgaea 3, Nippon Ichi’s first strategy role-playing game on the PlayStation 3 which sold 55,000 units. The final new entry in the top ten is the PlayStation 3 version of Assassin’s Creed at number nine with 28,000 units sold. Ubisoft’s title is not the only new Western game in the top thirty with the PlayStation 3 version of Need for Speed: ProStreet debuting at number fifteen, just ahead of the PlayStation 2 version at number sixteen. Namco Bandai’s Wii exclusive Family Ski though came in ahead of both at number twelve.

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