Third Parties Triumph In Japanese Sales Chart

Although sales are still at a seasonal low there has been a number of new entries in the Japanese sales charts this week, with third party titles for once dominating Nintendo DS sales. The best selling game this week is the first in a new trilogy of titles from Rogue Galaxy and Dragon Quest VIII developer Level-5. The puzzle based Professor Layton and the Mysterious Village managed an impressive debut with almost 138,000 unit sales, suggesting a bright future for Level-5’s new intellectual property. The second highest ranked title was Namco’s Tales of Destiny 2 for PSP with just over 73,000 sales. A remake of the original PlayStation 2 title of the same name, it is not to be confused with the U.S. PS1 release Tales of Destiny II - which was renamed from the original Japanese title of Tales of Eternia and has also been ported to the PSP. The third ranked title of the week is the sequel to Treasure’s popular anime based beat ‘em-up Bleach DS with over 45,000 unit sales, and Konami’s manga license Death Note for DS was just behind with over 44,500 sales. The remaining new entry in the top ten is Nippon Ichi Software’s Soul Cradle for PS2, which follows in the footsteps of the company’s other popular tactical role-playing titles such as Disgaea and Makai Kingdom with over 43,000 unit sales. The highest ranked PlayStation 3 title of the week is last week’s number one, Virtua Fighter 5, at number twenty-five. The highest ranked PSP title besides Tales of Destiny 2 is Monster Hunter Portable at number twenty-six - the continued success of the budget re-release giving a indication of the high volume of sales expected from its sequel. There are no Xbox 360 titles in the top fifty. Hardware sales were generally down across the board on the previous week, with the Nintendo DS down to 136,999 units sold. The Wii was down to 63,618, while the PSP was up slightly to 34,505. The PlayStation 3 was down to 20,675 units, while the PlayStation 2 remained constant at 16,192 unit sold. The Xbox 360 was down to 5,210, while the Game Boy Advance family of consoles sold just 1,836 units and the GameCube 347.

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