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Big in Japan: New Katamari, Chibi-Robo crack top 10

Dragon Quest IX easily retains the top spot for third straight week as Wii Sports Resort, latest Monster Hunter PSP continue strong

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Dragon Quest IX is still the reigning king of Japanese sales tracking firm Media Create's weekly top 10 charts, but the tremendously successful role-playing game is starting to lose a bit of steam. The game sold 2.3 million in its debut week, another 600,000 in its second, and for the week of July 20-26, a comparatively meager 270,000 copies.

Chibi Robo cleaned up at retailers in Japan.
Chibi Robo cleaned up at retailers in Japan.

That "comparatively meager" designation only applies to the game's previous two weeks of sales. Compared to everything else on sale in Japan right now, Dragon Quest IX is still monstrously successful, nearly quadrupling the total of the next best-selling title, Nintendo's Tomodochi Collection for the DS.

Tomodochi Collection wasn't the only bright spot for Nintendo this week. The publisher's newly released installment in the custodial minded Chibi-Robo franchise landed in fifth place, while Wii Sports Resort kept its momentum up, finishing the week in third place with more than 73,000 copies sold.

Third-party publishers also landed a few DS hits for Nintendo systems. In addition to Square Enix's Dragon Quest IX, Konami's new Penguin no Mondai game hit the charts, debuting at number four, while Takara Tomy's Hitman Reborn: Flame Rumble X fighting game took the seventh spot.

Games for Sony's systems rounded out the bottom half of the chart, led by Katamary Damacy Tribute in the six spot. Konami's latest PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 Pro Yakyuu Spirits baseball games batted eighth and ninth, respectively, while Capcom's Monster Hunter Freedom Unite for the PSP clung to the 10th spot, outlasting former chart residents, like Pokemon Platinum and Ys I & II Chronicles.

As for hardware, the finishing order of the systems was unchanged. DSi sales were down from 97,000 the previous week to about 80,000, but still would have topped the list at half that amount. Interestingly, the DSi was the only current-gen system to experience lowered sales week-over-week. The remaining current-gen hardware experienced a modest uptick in sales for the week.

Week of July 20-26, 2009
Software:
1) Dragon Quest IX (DS) - 270,305
2) Tomodachi Collection (DS) - 73,716
3) Wii Sports Resort (WII) - 73,570
4) Penguin no Mondai: Tenkuu no Senshi (DS)- 43,211
5) Okaeri! Chibi-Robo! Happy Richie Oosouji (DS) - 34,745
6) Katamari Damacy Tribute (PS3) - 28,485
7) Katekyoo Hitman Reborn! DS Flame Rumble X - Mirai Chou-Bakuhatsu!! (DS) - 27,536
8) Pro Yakyuu Spirits 6 (PS2) - 21,781
9) Pro Yakyuu Spirits 6 (PS3) - 20,938
10) Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (PSP) - 18,008

Hardware:
DSi - 80,362
PSP - 30,523
Wii - 23,995
DS Lite - 12,385
PS3 - 8,997
PS2 - 3,305
Xbox 360 - 3,080

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