A top ten featuring precisely zero games on HD consoles, this week’s Japanese charts are dominated by PSP and to a lesser extent Wii, with an interesting story surrounding the two versions of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time. The DS version of the multiplayer title outsold the Wii version by a ratio of almost 5:1 - hardly surprising given that the Wii game essentially looks worse than the DS one, by blowing up the DS graphics to fit your telly (and looking much blockier as a result). Echoes of Time DS sold a reasonable 102,000 copies, but that’s some way off the amount shipped - evidently Square-Enix was expecting much better, and the poor performance of the Wii game will undoubtedly lead once again to calls that it’s not suited to core games (people conveniently ignoring the small matter of the off-putting graphics).

Elsewhere, Taiko no Tatsujin Wii proves it has legs, while Mario Tennis doesn’t drop too many sales from last week, where it hit the top mainly by virtue of not having any real competition.Rhythm Tengoku Gold is still going strong, but sadly Namco-Bandai’s Fragile is nowhere to be seen in its second week on sale - whether that’s down to stores running out of stock isn’t entirely clear.

No hardware sales as yet - expect a rise for PSP, but whether that will nudge DSi off the top remains to be seen. But either way, Sony’s handheld is becoming a force to be reckoned with in the east.

01. [PSP] Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2 (Namco Bandai) 213,000 / NEW
02. [PSP] Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 (Konami) 109,000 / NEW
03. [PS2] Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 (Konami) 108,000 / NEW
04. [NDS] Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time (Square Enix) 102,000 / NEW
05. [PSP] Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G (PSP the Best) (Capcom) 23,000 / 380,000
06. [WII] Taiko no Tatsujin Wii (Namco Bandai) 22,000 / 339,000
07. [WII] Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time (Square Enix) 22,000 / NEW
08. [WII] Wii Play: Mario Tennis (Nintendo) 20,000 / 108,000
09. [NDS] Rhythm Tengoku Gold (Nintendo) 20,000 / 1,634,000
10. [WII] Wii Fit (Nintendo) 19,000 / 3,215,000

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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 5th, 2009 at 6:01 pm by Chris Schilling
Japan, charts.