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Big in Japan Feb. 21-27: 3DS sells 375,000

Games for Nintendo's latest portable claim half of top 10 software chart, but PSP Phantasy Star and Gundam games take top spots.

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While Westerners must wait until later this month to pick up the 3DS, Nintendo's glasses-free 3D handheld has already celebrated its launch in Japan, where it made a big splash on Media Create's Japanese sales charts for the week of February 21-27. The 3DS easily topped the hardware chart, while its games claimed half of the spots on the top 10.

A glasses-free 2D picture of the 3DS.
A glasses-free 2D picture of the 3DS.

The 3DS launched in Japan on February 26 and sold through 374,764 systems by the end of the next day. That's a little lower than the 400,000 figure reported by Japanese newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun in the days after the system's launch. Regardless, it still beat out the next best-selling hardware, the PSP, by nearly 8:1.

New hardware isn't much good without new games, ensuring the 3DS launch lineup was well represented in the top 10 charts. Professor Layton and the Mask of Miracle was easily the best-selling 3DS title of the launch, moving 119,951 copies during the week. Nintendogs + Cats sold a little more than half that amount (64,213 copies), while Samurai Warriors Chronicles, Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition, and Ridge Racer 3D rounded out the handheld's best-selling offerings with sub-50,000 performances.

Despite the new hardware hype, it wasn't a 3DS game that topped the week's software sales chart. Sega's PSP online role-playing game Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity claimed that honor, selling 206,654 copies in its first week of release. Another PSP game was close behind it, as Namco's latest superdeformed mech title, SD Gundam G Generation World, racked up sales of 192,981 copies in its own debut. In all, nine of the top 10 games were new releases, with the only exception being Capcom's frequent best-seller Monster Hunter Portable 3rd.

JAPAN GAME SALES WEEK OF FEBRUARY 21-27, 2011
Software:
Rank / Title / Publisher / Platform / Unit sales
1. Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity / Sega / PSP / 206,654
2. SD Gundam G Generation World / Namco / PSP / 192,981
3. Professor Layton and the Mask of Miracle / Level Five / 3DS / 119,951
4. Disgaea 4 / Nippon Ichi / PS3 / 79,425
5. Nintendogs + Cats / Nintendo / 3DS / 64,213
6. Samurai Warriors Chronicles / Koei / 3DS / 49,327
7. Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition / Capcom / 3DS / 44,649
8. Ridge Racer 3D / Namco / 3DS / 38,226
9. Monster Hunter Portable 3rd / Capcom / PSP / 36,323
10. The Idolmaster 2 / Namco / 360 / 34,621

Hardware:
3DS - 374,764
PSP - 47,955
PS3 - 23,654
Wii - 12,159
DSi LL - 9,093
DSi - 7,802
Xbox 360 - 3,366
PS2 - 1,773
PSP Go - 1,076
DS Lite - 663

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