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Nintendo released Super Smash Bros. Brawl in Japan on January 31 and, over the course of the next four days, gamers there snapped up over 800,000 copies of the Wii fighter. Long-running sales chart topper Wii Fit was finally dethroned this week, amid a stable of new releases that also included Disgaea 3, Assassin's Creed and Suzumiya Haruhi no Tomadoi. Also debuting, but not performing quite as well as the Nintendo mascot fighter was Capcom's Devil May Cry 4 which moved nearly a quarter million units combined on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, making it one of three PS3 titles to chart in the top ten. More »
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Mario tops the charts again this week, with Mario Party DS selling close to a quarter million copies in its debut week in Japan. It's followed by the game that is sure to push tens of thousands of PlayStation 3s, Shin Sangoku Musou 5, to be known as Dynasty Warriors 6 in North America. Its Xbox 360 counterpart cracked the top ten, as did Insomniac Games' Ratchet & Clank Future, all of which should make for an interesting week in hardware sales. More »
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What a difference a week can make. While sales of the Wii were bumped unimpressively by about 10,000 from last week on the release of Super Mario Galaxy in Japan, it's Ace Combat 6 that had the impact of a sonic boom on hardware. Last week's Xbox 360 sales were fairly high (in the upper 3,000s) but this week, sales of Microsoft's gaijin console are in the stratosphere. Relatively, that is. Ace Combat 6's debut, alongside a handful of new budget priced games, pushed Xbox 360 sales past the PlayStation 3's, selling 17,673 consoles from October 29 to November 4. That's a 475% increase! It looks like Microsoft Japan may have a winner. More »
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Good news for multi-billion dollar revenue making hardware manufacturers! This week's Japanese hardware sales chart, courtesy of Media Create, shows that everyone had a pretty decent week. Well, at least better than last. This week may signal the end of the Wii's low point, as Super Mario Galaxy is due to influence next week's sales. More »
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I wish I could lead off this post with good news that Seaman 2 greased the way for a strong week of PlayStation 2 sales, but, unsurprisingly, it wasn't much of a hardware mover. Actually, the PlayStation 2 performed almost exactly as it had the week before, besting only the Xbox 360, sales of which dropped some 50% week-to-week. Wii sales continue to slump as Japanese gamers wait desperately for something new and worthwhile to play. More »
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Seaman! Buckets and buckets of Seaman! That's what Japanese gamers gobbled up this week, as Sega's sequel to the Dreamcast test of patience from Vivarium for the PlayStation 2 topped the Japanese sales charts. The voice activated, missing link-raising sim just barely beat out Nintendo's newest non-game for the Nintendo DS, DS Bungaku Zenshuu, a collection of Japanese literature readable on the dual screen sensation. More »
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Off-beat D3 Publisher is bringing Earth Defense Force X (now retitled Earth Defense Force 2017) to the States. The EDF series originally appeared on the PS2 under the Simple 2000 label, but has since moved to the Xbox 360. The campy third person shooter lets characters shoot up giant bugs and robots. And who doesn't like that? So the big question is what language the game will be in. Says D3P's Brian Etheridge: More »
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There are some games that cannot be as good as you imagine them. Simple 2000 title Tairyou Jigoku ("The Overwhelming Hell") for the PS2 is precisely one of the those games. The plot is Alice in Wonderland gone bad. It's a "panic action" game and centers around a schoolgirl named Erika, her missing cell phone, giant bugs and a rabbit in a top hat. See, the rabbit in a top hat stole her cell phone (of course!) and as the girl goes searching for it, she's attacked by cockroaches, centipedes, crickets, spiders and snakes. When the creepy-crawlies start to attack, Erika shakes them off or smacks 'em with poles and sticks. Though, don't know which is worst for most schoolgirls: Giant insects or not having a cell phone. More »
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In Japan, mahjong is largely a male preserve. Thus, explaining game publisher D3's bikini-wearing, tile flipping gambling-slash-floor sweeping bonanza. Dubbed THE Dokodemo Gal Mahjong, the game is a PSP version of the Simple 2000 title Love * Mahjong. The game offers a chance to chit-chat with your virtual competitor, an array of customizable costumes, and "Service Time" in which the female characters are given tasks that need completion. Call it a hunch, but no doubt the game's producer pitched this as "Dead or Alive meets mahjong." Brian Ashcraft More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=199978&view=rss&microfeed=true You have to hand it to budget publisher D3. The Japanese powerhouse may not actually make good (read: not total garbage) games 99% of the time, but at least they're straightforward about what they do. There's little mystery about what to expect when you pick up a copy of Zombie vs. Ambulance or The Giant Woman. You're gonna get zombies, an ambulance, or a giant woman—and she's gonna be in a bikini. A giant bikini. More »
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