A new monthly report is in town, and it's a collaborative effort between the top three firms that track sales in the video game industry. North America's NPD Group, UK's Chart Track, and Japan's Enterbrain are now to come up with joint monthly reports. And with their powers combined... it's the Top Global Markets Report! Oooh, sounds like a golden idea! And guess what? The first report has already been published. Wanna see? Get a hold of the top five worldwide best-selling games of 2008 so far!

Those who couldn't grab the special issue of Famitsu or bribe their lucky pals for a peek at what's in Capcom's 25th Anniversary Special DVD will be glad to know that some of that exclusive content has been made available over Capcom's official website. Count 'em: two raw video interviews. There's one to tide PSP fans of Monster Hunter Freedom 2nd G, and a Famitsu video interview for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 gamers bleeding for Resident Evil 5. Full story. Now.

Last week, we had a mammoth of a game release with Devil May Cry 4. It's not going to be any different this time around, with the much-awaited Lost Odyssey by Mistwalker finally making its US debut. Other noteworthy games in this batch are Professor Layton and the Curious Village, Dungeon Explorer: Warriors of Ancient Arts, RPG Maker VX, and a slew of other titles. Hit the full article for the rest of the list.

* Article originally posted Feb 11, 2008 at 01:12AM

In a report made by Enterbrain on the hardware and software sales figures, Nintendo rose to the occasion by outselling their competitors in Japan with the Wii and Wii Sports. With millions of units sold for both console and gaming title, Nintendo is a force to be reckoned with for the upcoming year.

Details on Nintendo's sales figures after the jump!

Square Enix and Enterbrain have published a must-have book for all Final Fantasy enthusiasts: the Final Fantasy 20th Anniversary History Book. The book contains a lot of details, images, and articles about all the Final Fantasy games released the past years. Check out the full article to find out more about this awesome book.

Here's a new update on the recent Japanese hardware and software sales reports from Japanese publication Enterbrain. This latest update bring into focus the exact figures that Japan's choice hardware and software garnered for the period of March to September.

As was previously reported, the DS leads hardware sales with 3.47 million for the time period, with the Sony PSP tailing in at 1.07 million sales. For the next-gen consoles, the chart's leader was the Nintendo Wii at 1.60 sales, followed by the Sony PlayStation 3 at 385,000 sales, and the Xbox 360 at 82,000.

Nintendo's Mario Party 8 (Wii) took the top position, at 819,327 copies sold. Second goes to The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for the DS (it's out now, by the way) at 789,091 sales, followed by Wii Play with 771,421 sales, and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon 2 (DS) with 602,819 sales. Square Enix's Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII appears to be the lone PSP title for the top five, with 602,819 sales.

The video game market in Japan rose 21.7% from last year thanks to sales of local favorite, the Nintendo DS. Sales of its bigger brother the Wii and its handheld competitor the PSP also helped to expand the market. This information comes from magazine publisher Enterbrain.

Hardware sales rose 33.5% from last year and is currently up to JP¥ 138.3 billion (US$ 1.2 billion), amounting to 3.478 million DS unit and DS units sold in the first half of this fiscal year. Software sales rose 12.8% and is currently up to JP¥ 154.5 billion (US$ 1.3 billion).

We should expect to see the numbers keep on growing with the sales of the PSP Slim, which sold more than every other console combined for the week of September 23, boosted by sales of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII. Nintendo stocks were also reported to be the second highest in Japan last September 25.

According to our previous report, the PSP Slim and Lite (aka PSP-2000) has sold a total of 130,000 units during the first day alone in Japan. Now the figures provided by independent company Enterbrain suggests that the new model actually did a lot better than that.

Enterbrain's figures also implied that the PSP numbers contributed tremendously to the overall handheld sales figures of Sony. The company reports that during the first three days of availability in Japan, gamers snatched a total of 250,702 PSP Slim units.

This does not include sales for Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII 10th Anniversary Limited model which amount to 75,943 units. This surge brings the total Japanese PSP sales since 2004 to 6,217,664. There's still no new data whether software sales will be boosted as well because of the arrival of PSP-2000.

Enterbrain added that the first information regarding that should be available next week.

Famitsu publisher Enterbrain just released their report on hardware sales in Japan for the month of May. What's the overall verdict, you ask? Well, if you compare the total hardware sales of May 2007 to that of last year's, there's actually a 10% increase. That means more people in Japan are buying handhelds, consoles, or both. One could then assume that there are more gamers this year then there have been last year. Now, on with the specifics; it's pie chart time!

The DS Lite still reigns supreme in Japan, munching off around 55.8% of the market. Their half of the pie consists of 600,000 units sold, thus totalling overall DS unit sales (both Lite and Phat) to a whopping 17,152,000 units sold in Japan. The Wii claims the second spot, with 22.7% of total hardware sales.

Around one fifth of the pie is occupied by Sony. Their PSP, PS2, and PS3 are holding steady at 11.1%, 4.8%, and 4.1% respectively. Following Nintendo, Sony's handheld and console units have a firm grasp of the next top three spots. Rounding up the rest of the hardware sales are the Xbox 360 at 1% and the GBA at .2%.

On the software side of sales though, Sony is king. The PSP's Final Fantasy Tactics: The Lion War is sitting at the top with 241,901 copies sold during the month of May. Here are the top 10 games sold in Japan:

1. Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions - 241,904 (PSP) Square Enix
2. Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings - 180,260 (DS) Square Enix
3. Super Paper Mario - 156,642 (Wii) Nintendo
4. Wii Sports - 140,704 (Wii) Nintendo
5. Momotarou Dentetsu DS: Tokyo & Japan - 124,223 (DS) Hudson
6. Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree - 113,035 (Wii) Nintendo
7. New Super Mario Bros. - 112,486(DS) Nintendo
8. Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day - 103,610 (DS) Nintendo
9. Shining Wind - 101,138 (PS2) SEGA
10. Yoshi's Island DS - 97,331 (DS) Nintendo

 

Last March, Capcom's Monster Hunter Freedom 2 sold 348,000 copies according to Enterbrain's Famitsu Marketing Service. The said sales for the month sets the number of copies sold to 1,095,000 thus bumping up Monster Hunter Freedom 2 to platinum status. Hitting platinum is a feat in itself, but what makes it even more amazing is the fact that this is the very first PSP game to gain that distinction in Japan.

It's also interesting to note that the game's sales for the month are responsible for 85% of total sales for game publisher Capcom.

In other news, Wii Play has also surpassed the 1,000,000 mark, making it the second game for the Wii to reach the coveted platinum distinction. The first? Wii Sports. Nintendo got the lion's share of the market in march. The entire Japanese console market received a 61.7% bump but software sales dropped by 29.8%. Still, that didn't stop two games from hitting platinum that month.