Nintendo's Tomodachi Connection features Miis in a big way

Nintendo’s Tomodachi Connection (a kind of cross between Nintendogs and The Sims) is comfortably number one in Japan this week, selling three times as many copies as its nearest rival, with over 100,000 units shifted. Not bad for a brand new IP.

Given the long tail of Nintendo’s more mainstream-friendly output, I’d expect it to hang around the top ten for quite a while longer. Let’s hope it continues to sell, as it would certainly make a western release more likely - like labelmate Style Savvy, it’ll require a big localisation effort, but I wouldn’t bet against this arriving in the west at some point in 2010.

Elsewhere, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days creeps towards half a million sales, while Level 5 continues to have success with its increasing range of puzzle games - though Sloane and McHale is no Layton, it looks like it could well have legs. Meanwhile, Miles Edgeworth hangs on in there, making it a good week for Capcom, with two further entries in the top ten on PSP, including the imperious Monster Hunter Portable 2 G. Sad to see Platinum Games’ Infinite Space plummet from top spot to number 18 - hopefully this won’t deter Sega from bringing it to the west, even though there’s no sniff of a launch date over here.

The full top ten follows…

01./00. [NDS] Tomodachi Collection (Friend Collection) (Nintendo) - 102,000 / NEW
02./00. [PSP] Fate/Unlimited Codes Portable (Capcom) - 34,000 / NEW
03./02. [NDS] Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days (Square Enix) - 27,000 / 457,000
04./03. [NDS] Sloane and MacHale’s Mysterious Story (Level 5) - 15,000 / 144,000
05./06. [PSP] Monster Hunter Portable 2 G (BEST) (Capcom) - 14,000 / 749,000
06./04. [NDS] Gyakuten Kenji (Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth) (Capcom) - 11,000 / 244,000
07./00. [NDS] Akira Tago’s Mind Exercises (Atama no Taisou) Vol. 1: Puzzle Solving Journey Around the World (Level 5) - 10,000 / NEW
08./08. [WII] Wii Fit (Nintendo) - 10,000 / 3,463,000
09./05. [PS3] Shin Sangoku Musou 5 Empires (Koei) - 9,000 / 125,000
10./18. [NDS] Pokemon Platinum (Pokemon Co.) - 7,000 / 2,447,000

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Big news in the Japanese hardware charts this week - Microsoft’s Xbox 360 not only shifted more units than Sony’s HD rival, but also managed to outsell Wii, and by quite some margin to boot.

For the week ending 22nd February, the 360 topped home console sales with 21,013, more than four thousand ahead of Wii on 16,900. Meanwhile, Sony is snapping hard on Nintendo’s heels with 15,967 PS3s sold for the week (these figures taken from CVG.com).

The software charts make the reason for the 360 spike obvious - Square-Enix role-player Star Ocean: The Last Hope, sold a whopping 162,000 copies, easily beating last week’s chart topper, Mario and Luigi RPG 3, into second place, the latter suffering a large drop in sales to 62,000 units on its second week of release.

The other big success was the PSP, with poptastic starlet-grooming franchise Idolmaster greedily hogging three chart positions, with the Perfect Sun, Missing Moon and Wandering Star variations snaffling third, fourth and fifth place respectively. Shining Force Feather kept the DS’s end up, taking sixth spot with 30,000 copies sold.

Thanks to GAF for the software numbers.

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No surprise that the return of one of gaming’s best-known franchises toppled Wii Fit from the all-formats chart, with the magisterial Street Fighter IV dragon-punching its way to the summit. Nintendo’s phenomenally successful non-game only dropped to second spot, despite fierce competition from the nerd-tastic Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II on PC. Mario Kart, Wii Play and Layton all suffered small drops, while Mystery Case Files: Millionheir plummeted from third spot to number 26 - presumably stock shortages costing it dear.

There was better news for House of the Dead: Overkill, which hung onto the number 15 position in the all-formats chart, rising one place to ninth in the single-format rundown - presumably strong word of mouth helped its second week sales - let’s hope it hangs in there for a while longer to prove that hardcore content can sell on Wii.

Elsewhere, Animal Crossing: Let’s Go to the City enjoyed a small resurgence in the lower reaches of the forty, but besides that, it was a fairly slow week for Nintendo news.

The full chart can be found on Chart-Track’s website.

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The pattern’s starting to become familiar - DSi still reigns supreme in Japan, with PSP in second place. Wii’s just about scraping into third, with PS3 hot on its heels.

That said, it’s interesting to note that even with the release of Street Fighter IV this week, PS3 couldn’t raise its game enough to topple Wii for a single week. So perhaps once it’s over this slightly fallow period, Nintendo’s casual-courting console will start to pick up sales, particularly as the bigger third-party releases hit (how Nintendo must be looking forward to Monster Hunter’s arrival). It’s hard to see Wii de Asobu: Metroid Prime having any effect on Wii’s sales next week, particularly as the series is much more popular in the west - if any console sees a sharp rise in sales next week it’ll be the 360, with Square-Enix’s Star Ocean IV on the way.

Figures below, courtesy of Chart-Get.

DSi 53,483
PSP 34,256
Wii 21,016
PS3 18,656
DS Lite 14,810
Xbox 360 9,833
PS2 5,332

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If you said Call of Duty or FIFA 09 (or, indeed, anything other than Wii Fit) then hide your face in shame.

If, however, you said Wii Fit (which I’ll presume is just about everyone, given that you’re clearly an intelligent bunch for visiting this here blog) then you’d be entirely right, as the chart-shagging megahit managed to top the All-Formats Chart with room to spare, holding off the challenge of FIFA 09 and Call of Duty: World at War.

In truth, it’s a pretty slow week - Wii Fit merely has the lowest drop in sales (a tiny 2%) of all the top ten as the credit crunch nibbles away at a few more wallets. That’s not to say that no-one’s buying - the week’s highest new entry is the casual-pleasing Mystery Case Files: Millionheir - a kind of Where’s Wally with bad puns. Not content with nabbing two of the top four, Nintendo greedily hang onto positions five to seven, with Mario Kart Wii and Wii Play standing firm and Professor Layton perched just above ‘em.

Elsewhere, it’s not quite so good news for nostalgia fans, with neither Chrono Trigger DS nor New Play Control! Pikmin anywhere to be seen. The latter’s price-point (and distinct lack of marketing presence) seems to have hurt its chances, but it’s sad to see the former underperforming. Have most people imported, is the game just not well-known enough, or has piracy - so rife on the DS - harmed its sales? Perhaps it’s a combination of the three.

One more bright spot on Nintendo’s consoles - EA’s Sim Animals, as is often the way with Wii and DS titles these days - sees a massive weekly sales increase on its debut week (up a whopping 90%), the game entering at number 22.

This Friday sees the release of Bolt on about twelve different formats, plus the surprisingly excellent FEAR 2 and House of the Dead: Overkill, which I shall be getting this week. All of which surely pose some kind of challenge to Wii Fit’s throne. Can it hold on for a fifth week in a row? Tune in same time, same place in seven days’ time to find out.

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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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Wii Fit has cemented its position on the top of the UK charts by, er, dropping 17% of sales from last week, but nevertheless selling enough to keep Call of Duty in runner-up spot, while EA’s definitely-better-than-PES-this-year FIFA 09 rises to third position. But the big mover on this week’s chart is Professor Layton and the Curious Village, with more shops carrying stock of the in-demand puzzler, pushing its sales up 54% on last week. Can it climb even higher?

Elsewhere, Mario Kart Wii sees a small increase in sales at number six, while Wii Play and My Fitness Coach both drop a place each. EA might be disappointed by the performance of SimAnimals, which only managed to reach number sixteen on the Wii Full-Price chart, though it might well rise next week as Wii software tends to do.

Wii Fit’s position makes it Nintendo’s joint second longest-lasting number one, with a total of seven weeks at the top, matching Pokemon Gold which achieved the same feat eight years ago. It still has some way to go to beat Pokemon Yellow one year earlier, which managed a whopping ten weeks at the summit.

Will Wii Fit make it four consecutive weeks on top? Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box and Cooking Mama 2: World Kitchen probably represent its strongest challengers next week - I can’t see New Play Control! Pikmin toppling the casual-pleaser, though stranger things have happened. Tune in next week to find out. Or, for a more detailed run-down of the All-Formats Top 40, click here.

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Mario Tennis stays at the top while Namco-Bandai’s beautifully desolate adventure Fragile enters at number two. It’s a very slow week for sales, though, so whether the publisher is happy with that total is anyone’s guess. Reports suggest its initial shipment was just 30,000 and that some Japanese gamers have struggled to get their hands on a copy - hopefully it can hang around a little longer, as the Wii could do with a few third-party successes.

And that’s exactly what Taiko no Tatsujin Wii can be regarded as - the back-in-stock rhythm-actioner zooming back up the charts into third position, making it a rare Wii 1-2-3, with Wii Fit upping its Japanese tally to 3,196,000 units sold.  The remaining six positions are shared by the two handhelds, which shows how portable gaming has become the dominant force in the east.

Depressingly, only one of these games has thus far been released in the west, though we’re getting Mario Tennis soon and - hopefully - Rhythm Tengoku Gold. Fingers crossed someone picks up Fragile for Europe and the US, but I’m not getting my hopes up.The full top ten is below.

01. [WII] Wii Play: Mario Tennis (Nintendo) 31,000 / 88,000
02. [WII] Fragile (Namco Bandai) 26,000 / NEW
03. [WII] Taiko no Tatsujin Wii (Namco Bandai) 25,000 / 316,000
04. [PSP] Zill’O (KOEI) 25,000 / NEW
05. [PSP] Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G (PSP the Best) (Capcom) 25,000 / 357,000
06. [NDS] Rhythm Tengoku Gold (Nintendo) 20,000 / 1,614,000
07. [WII] Wii Fit (Nintendo) 19,000 / 3,196,000
08. [PSP] Dissidia Final Fantasy (Square Enix) 18,000 / 866,000
09. [NDS] Devil Survivor (Atlus) 18,000 / NEW
10. [NDS] Wagamama Fashion: Girl’s Mode (Nintendo) 17,000 / 684,000

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Wii Fit is the number one title in Chart-Track’s All-Formats Top 40 once more, a non-mover for the first time since its release. It’s hit the top four times previously, but this fifth stint is the only time it’s remained at the top for more than a week. Amazingly, its sales rose once more, this week by over a fifth, beating last week’s total by 21%.

Three further Wii titles made the top ten - Mario Kart Wii at eight gaining sales through in-store hardware bundles, while Wii Play dropped to six and Ubisoft’s Wii Fit rival, titled My Fitness Coach, was sandwiched between the two - a new entry at seven.

Meanwhile, Professor Layton and the Curious Village had a welcome rise, the delightful puzzle adventure climbing to tenth spot.

Elsewhere, Eidos proved that you ignore the last-gen consoles at your peril, the release of the PS2 version of Tomb Raider: Underworld propelling Lara to a top ten spot at nine, while the terrific-but-very-similar-to-the-original Skate 2 entered in third place, knocking the horrifically bad Lord of the Rings: Conquest down to five. Which is still much higher than it should be, grumble grumble.

The full list can be found right here.

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Nintendo reigns supreme at the top of both software and hardware charts once more, this time taking pole position with a remake of a GameCube game. The success of Wii Play: Mario Tennis proves Nintendo made a wise decision to revisit some of its old titles - in Japan, at least. Over here where the games are less well-known and well-publicised and the cost is higher, I’m not expecting them to do nearly as well. Of the range, I always thought Mario Tennis might be the most successful, and that looks like being the case, as it pips Atlus’ Devil Survivor to the top, selling just over 1000 copies more.

Elsewhere, evergreens like Rhythm Tengoku Gold, Wagamama Fashion and Wii Fit hang on to top ten positions in a slow week for sales, while Nintendo’s latest non-game, DS Uranai Seikatsu - some kind of fortune-telling software - enters in tenth spot.

In the hardware charts, DSi is once again comfortably on top - factor in DS Lite sales and it’s almost twice as many as PSP, while PS3 is ominously starting to catch up on Wii’s weekly sales, with over 20,000 units sold compared to 32,000 of Nintendo’s console. It’s not eating into Wii’s lead, but if those sales start to increase, Nintendo will be nervously looking over its shoulder. Full charts follow, courtesy of Media-Create.

01. [WII] Wii Play: Mario Tennis (Nintendo) 56,509 / NEW
02. [NDS] Megami Ibunroku: Devil Survivor (Atlas) 55,466 / NEW
03. [PS3] Naruto: Narutimate Storm (Namco Bandai) 44,065 / NEW
04. [PSP] Dissidia Final Fantasy (Square Enix) 29,355 / 848,000
05. [PSP] Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G (PSP the Best) (Capcom) 27,032 / 332,000
06. [NDS] Rhythm Tengoku Gold (Nintendo) 25,488 / 1,594,000
07. [PS3] Fallout 3 (Bethesda Softworks) 24,488 / NEW
08. [NDS] Wagamama Fashion: Girl’s Mode (Nintendo) 22,628 / 667,000
09. [WII] Wii Fit (Nintendo) 21,847 / 3,177,000
10. [NDS] DS Uranai Seikatsu (Nintendo) 19,881 / NEW

DSi 62525
PSP 42559
Wii 32333
PS3 20690
DSL 18809
360 9576
PS2 5760

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