The Last Story Tops The Charts in Japan

Final Fantasy father Hironobu Sakaguchi's long awaited Wii RPG The Last Story hit Japan last week, and managed to beat out a flood of new releases to take the top sales spot. 

The Last Story, released just about a year after its first announcement, sold 114,722 units in its first week. This includes sales of a version that comes bundled with a Wii system. 

Is this good or bad? The answer probably depends on how much Nintendo expected of the game. Xenoblade, another high profile Wii RPG, also topped the charts at its debut in June of last year with 83,000 units sold. Established RPG franchises like Tales and Final Fantasy will often see first week sales of 200,000 to well over a million units. 

Last week was packed with new software releases, mostly on PSP. Japan's hottest system saw six entries in the top 10 alone, including such sequels as Valkyria Chronicles 3 and Kenka Bancho 5. 

Xbox 360 also had a pretty big presence this week thanks to games like hostess simulator Dream Club Zero and girls shooting game (that is to say, you shoot girls with your "pheromone" gun) Gal Gun, which made it into the top 20. These types of games are exclusive for Xbox 360. 

Here's the full top 20 covering January 24 through January 30, as passed along at 4Gamer. Release date and life to date sales are in parenthesis. 

• 1. The Last Story (Nintendo, Wii, 1/27): 114,722
• 2. Valkyria Chronicles 3 (Sega, PSP, 1/27): 102,779
• 3. My Little Sister Can't Be This Cute (Namco Bandai, PSP, 1/27): 88,493
• 4. Kenka Bancho 5 (Spike, PSP, 1/27): 58,977
• 5. A Certain Magical Index (ASCII, PSP, 1/27): 56,017
• 6. Dragon Age Origins (Spike, PS3, 1/27): 42,854
• 7. Monster Hunter Freedom 3 (Capcom, PSP, 12/1): 33,338 (4,128,278)
• 8. Dream Club Zero (D3 Publisher, Xbox 360, 1/27): 21,734
• 9. Kingom Hearts Birth by Sleep Final Mix (Square Enix, PSP, 1/20): 20,528 (97,846)
• 10. Donkey Kong Returns (Nintendo, Wii, 12/9): 19,214 (773,893)
• 11. Dragon Age Origins (Spike, Xbox 360, 1/27): 14,000
• 12. Tsuku Monogatari (Furyu, PSP, 2/17): 13,329
• 13. Gal Gun (Alchemist, Xbox 360, 1/27): 12,419
• 14. Wii Party (Nintendo, Wii, 7/8/2010): 10,778 (1,767,425)
• 15. Chaos; Head Love Chu Chu (5pb., PSP, 1/27): 10,753
• 16. Pokemon Black & White (Pokemon, DS, 9/18/2010): 10,654 (5,050,638)
• 17. Inazuma Eleven 3 The Ogre (Level-5, DS, 12/16/2010): 10,437 (388,350)
• 18. Ni no Kuni (Level-5, DS, 12/9/2010): 8,814 (459,967)
• 19. Monster Hunter Frontier Online Season 10 Premium Package (Capcom, Xbox 360, 1/26): 8,055
• 20. AKB1/48 (Namco Bandai, PSP, 12/23/2010): 7,916 (359,859)

The Last Story's top placement gave Wii hardware a tiny boost. Hardware sales remained slow across the board, though. DS may be slowing down as excitement builds for 3DS, which launches in Japan on the 26th. Sony's NGP announcement came late last week, so we'll have to see if there's any affect on PSP sales over the coming months. 

Here's the full hardware chart for the same period, with last week's sales in parentheses. 

• 1. PSP: 34,648 (35,636)
• 2. PS3: 25,149 (23,792)
• 3. Wii: 19,448 (14,547)
• 4. DSi LL: 11,891 (11,720)
• 5. DSi: 9,611 (8,990)
• 6. X360: 3,513 (2,338)
• 7. PS2: 1,938 (1,836)
• 8. DS Lite: 1,059 (1,528)
• 9. PSP go: 280 (198)