According to Japanese video games sales tracker, Media Create, the best selling game for the week of 16th to 22th April was Nintendo’s latest Wii game, Super Paper Mario, with 144 thousand copies sold. Developed by Intelligent Systems (Fire Emblem, Advance Wars), it is the latest game in the Paper Mario series of games which began on the Nintendo 64 and its first week of sales is higher than either of the previous entries.

The top five games in the Software Sales chart were all new this week, with Super Paper Mario followed by an all-ages Playstation 2 game based on the Fate/Stay Night graphic novel with nearly 135 thousand copies sold. In third position was an expansion for last year’s Persona 3 on PS2, entitled Fes, while Bandai-Namco’s Nodame Cantabile on DS and Square Enix’s Final Fantasy Anniversary Edition on PSP rounded out the top 5. Last weeks top title, the latest in the Phoenix Wright series dropped into sixth place, followed by last week’s number two, Mario vs Donkey Kong 2. Wii Sports and Wii Play dropped to positions eight and nine respectively, despite an increase in their weekly sales, while Yoshi’s Island DS rounds out the top ten. For the top fifty, the DS has 34 titles while the PS2 has eight and the PSP and Wii four apiece.

In the hardware charts the Nintendo DS continues its dominance, with its weekly sales increasing to over 172 thousand this week, and likely to increase more over the next week assuming the supply is available with the Japanese Golden Week usually marking an increase in video game sales. The Wii stayed roughly steady, up two thousand over last week at just under 78 thousand, and the PSP received a small boost to nearly 30 thousand on the release of Final Fantasy. The Playstation 2 and 3 were steady, with a very slight decrease from last week to 11 thousand.

Next week’s sales data will be available late due to the Golden Week holidays, but will likely be dominated by the huge number of new titles that were set for release over this historically high-selling period. In particular, Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings (DS), Big Brain Academy Wii and One Piece Grand Adventure (Wii) are likely to sell a fair number of copies.

Hardware Chart

Software Chart

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